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THE 



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SPEECHES 

OF 

CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ, 

DELIVERED AT THE BAR, 



VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASfONS IN 
IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

A LETTER TO GEORGE IV 



EDITED BY HIMSELF. 



SIXTH AMERICAN ^E^DITIOJV 



PHlLADELPifiA: 

PRIT^TED Amu PUBLISHED BY HICKMAX 

NO. 121, CHESNUT STREET; AND HAZZARD 
h HI nor AN PETERSBURG, TA 




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THE 

FOLLOWING SPEECHES 

ARE, BY PERMISSIOir, 
DEDICATED TO 

WILLIAM ROSCOE, 

WITH 
THE IttOST SINCERE RESPECT, 
AND AFFECTION 

OF THEIR 

author: 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Preface by Mr. Finlay 

Speech delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr. 
Finlay by the Roman Catholics of the Town and 
County of Sligo. 1 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the 
Roman Cathohcs of Cork 18 

Speech delivered at a Dinner given on Dinas Isl- 
and, in the Lake of Killarney, on Mr. Phillips' 
Health being given, together with that of Mr. 
Payne, a young American S5 

Speech delivered at an aggregate Meeting of the 
Roman Catholics of the County and City of 
Dublin 42 

Petition referred to in the preceding Speech, 
drawn by Mr. PhilHps at the request of the Ro- 
man Catholics of Ireland 6$ 

The Address to H. R. H. the Princess of Wales,, 
a2 ' 



^i CONTENTS. 

drawn by Mr. Phillips at the^ request of the Ro- ^^^ 
man Catholics of Ireland 'gg 

Speech delivered by Mr. Phillips at a Pubhc Din- 
ner given to liin^ by the Friends of Civil and Re- 
ligious Liberty, in Liverpool * yq 

Speech of Mr., Phillips in the case of Guthrie v. 
Sterne delivered in the Court of Common Pleas 
Bublin 83 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of O'iMulIan v. 
M'Korkill, delivered at the County Court-house 
Galway jq^ 

Speech in the case of Connaghton v. Dillon deliv- 
ered in the County Court-house of Rosommon 133 

Speecli of Mr. Phillips in the case of Creighton v. 
Tovvnsend, delivered in the Court of Common 
. Pleas, Dublin j43 

Speech in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, delivered 
in the Coutity Court-house, Galway ^ 165 

A Character of Napoleon Buonaparte, down to the 
period of his EkUq to Elba. 185 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Browne v. 
Blake, for crim. con. delivered in Dublin, on the 
9th July, 1817. 191 

Speech of xMr. Phillips at a meeting of the gentle- 
men, clergy, freeholders, and other inhabitants 
of the County of Sligo, for the purpose of taking 
into consideration an Address of Condolence to 



CONTENTS. vii 

Page 

the King on the Death of his Koyal Father, and 

of Congratulation to his Majesty on his Acces- 
sion to the Throne ,213 

Speech of Mr. Phillips delivered at the Annual 
Meeting of the British and Foreign Auxiliary 
Bible Society, London , 222 

Letter of Mr. Phillips to George lY. October 6lh,' 
1820 228 



PREFACE. 

BY JOHN FINLAY, ESQ. 

The Speeches of Phillips are now, for the first 
time, offered to the world inan authentic form. So far 
as his exertions have been hitherto developed, his 
admirers, and they are innumerable, must admit, that 
the text of this volume is an acknowledged reference, 
to which future criticism may fairly resort, and from 
which his friends must deduce any title which the 
speaker may have created to the character of an orator. 

The interests of his reputation impose no necessity 
of denying many of those imperfections which have 
been imputed to these productions. The value of all 
human exertion is comparative; and positive excellence 
is but a flattering designation, even of the best pro- 
ducts of industry and mind. 

There is, perhaps but one way by which we could 
avoid all possible defects, and that is, by avoiding all 
possible exertion. The very fastidious, and the very 
uncharitable, may too often be met with, in the class 
of the Indolent; and the man of talent is generally most 
liberal in his censure, whose industry has given him 
a 4 



li PREEACE. 

least tillc to praise. Thus defects and detraction are 
as the spots and shadow which of necessity adhere and 
attach to every object of honourable toil. Were it 
possible for the friends of Mr. l^hillip^ to select those 
defects which could fill up the measure of unavoidable 
imperfection, and at the same time inflict least injury 
on his reputation, doubtless they would prefer the 
blemishes and errors natural to youth, consonant to 
genius, and consistent with an obvious and read}^ 
correction. To this description, we apprehend, may 
])e reduced all the errors that have been imputed 
through a system of wide- spreading and unwearied 
criticism, animated by that envy with which indolence 
too oft regards tlie success of industry and talent, and 
subsidized by power in its struggle to repress the 
reputation and importance of a rapidly rising young 
man, whom it had such good reason both to hate and 
iear. For it would be ignorance not to know, and 
knowing, it would be affectation to conceal, that his 
political principles were a drawback on his reputation; 
and that the dispraise of these speeches has been a 
discountable quantity for the promotion of placemen 
and the procurement of place. 

This system of depreciation thus powerfully wielded, 
even to the date of the present publication, failed not 
in its energy, though it has in its object; nay more, it 



PREFACE. XI 

has succeeded in procwring for him the beneficial 
results of a rpultiplying" re-action. To borrow the ex- 
pressibn of an eminent classic, "Ihe rays of their in- 
dignation collected upon him, served to illumine, but 
could not consume;" and doubtless, this hostility may 
have promoted this fact, that the-materials of this 
volume are at this moment read in all the languages of 
Europe; and whatever be the proportion of their merits 
to their faults, they are unlikely ,to escape the attention 
of posterity. 

The independent reader, whom this book may 
introduce to a first or more correct acquaintance with 
his eloquence, will therefore be disposed to protect 
his mind against these illiberal prepossessions thus 
actively diffused, on the double conside ration tlMt 
some defects are essential to such and so much labour, 
and that some detraction may justly be accounted for 
by the motives of the system whose vices he exposed. 
The same reader, if he had not the opportunity of 
hearing these speeches dehvered by the author, will 
iTiEike in his favour another deduction for a different 
reason. * 

The great father of ancient eloquence was accus. 
tomed to say, that action was the first, and second, and 
last quality of an orator. This was the 'dictum of a 
supreme authority; it was an exaggeration notwilh» 



xii PREFACE. 

standing; but the observation must contain much truth 
to permit such exaggeration; and whilst we allow that 
delivery is not every thing, it will be allowed that it 
is much of the effect of oratory. 

Nature has been bountiful to the subject of these 
remarks in the useful accident of a prepossessing ex* 
terior; an interesting figure, an animated countenance, 
and a demeanour devoid of affectation, and distin- 
guished by a modest self-possession, give him the 
favourable opinion of his audience, even before he has 
addressed them. His eager, lively, and sparkling eye 
melts or kindles in pathos or indignation; his voice, 
by its compass, s\veetness, and variet}', ever audible 
and seldom loud, never hurried, inarticulate, or in- 
distinct, secures to his audience every word that he 
utters, and preserves him from the painful appearance 
of effort. 

His memory is not less fiiithful in the conveyance 
of his meaning, than his voice: unlike Fox in tliis 
respect, he never w\ants a v/ord; unlike Bushe, he 
never pretends to want one; and unlike Grattan, he 
never either wants or recalls one. 

His delivery is freed from every thing fantastic — is 
simple and elegant, impressive and sincere; and if we 
add the circumstance of his youth to his other external 
qualificw^tions, none of his contemporaries in this voca- 



PREFACE. xiil 

lion can pretend to an equal combination of these 
accidental advantages. 

If, then, action be a great part of the effect of ora- 
tory, the reader who has not heard him, is excluded 
from that consideration, so important to a right opin- 
ion, and on which his excellence is unquestioned. 

The ablest and severest of all the critics who have 
assailed him, (we allude of course, to the Edinburgh 
lieview,) in their criticism on Guthrie and Sterne, have 
paid him an involuntary and unprecedented compli- 
ment. He is the only individual in these countries to 
whom this literary work has devoted an entire article 
on a single speech; and when it is recollected that the . 
basis of this criticism was an unauthorised and in- 
correct publication of a single forensic exertion in the 
ordinary routine of professional business, it is very 
questionable whether such a publication afforded a 
just and proportionate ground-work for so much gene- 
ral criticism, or a fair criterion of the alleged speaker's 
general merits. This criticism sums up its objections, 
and concludes its remarks, by the following commend- 
ing observation, — that a more strict control over his 
fancy would constitute a remedy for his defects. 

Exuberance of fancy is certainly a defect, but it is 
evidence of an attribute essential to an orator. There 
are few men without some judgment, but there are 



xiv^ PREFACE. 

many men without any imagination; the latter clasa 
never did, and never can produce an orator, \yithout 
imagination, the speaker sinks to the mere dry arguer, 
the matter-of-fact man, the calculator, or syllogist, or 
sophist; the dealer in figures; the compiler of facts; the 
mason, but not the architect of the pile; for the dictate 
of the imagination is the inspiration of oratory, which 
imparts to matter animation and soul. 

Oratory is the great art of persuasion; its purpose is 
to give, in a particular instance, a certain direction to 
human^^ction. The faculties of the orator are judgment 
and imiigination; aud reason and eloquence, the pro- 
duct of these faculties, must work on the judgment 
and feelings of his audience, for the attainment of his 
end. The speaker who addresses the judgment alone 
may be argumentative, but never can be eloquent; for 
argument instructs without interesting, and eloquence 
interests without convincing; but oratory is neither; it 
is the compound of both; it conjoins the fefelings and 
opinions of men; it speaks to the passions through the 
mind, and to the mind through the passions; and leads 
its audience to its just purpose by the combined and 
powerful agency of human reason and human feeling. 
The components of this combination will vary, of 
course, in proportion to the number and sagacity of 
(he auditory which the speaker addresses. With 



PREFACE. XV 

jtidges it is to be hoped that the passions will be weak; 
with public assemblies it is to be hoped that reasoning 
. will be strong; but although the imagination may, in 
the first case, be unemployed, in the second it cannot 
be dispensed with; for if the advocate of virtue avoid^j 
to address the feelings of a mixed assembly, whether 
it be a jury or a political meeting, he has no security 
that their feeling, and their bad feelings, may not be 
brought into action against him; he surrenders to his 
enemy the strongest of his weapons, and by a species 
of irrational generosity contrives to ensure his own 
defeat in the conflict. To juries and public assemblies 
alone the following speeches have been addressed; and 
it is by ascertaining their effect on these assemblies or 
juries, that the merit of the exertion should in justice 
be measured. 

But there seems a general and prevalent mistake 
among our critics on this judgment. They seem to 
think that the taste of the individual is the standard by 
which the value of oratory should be decided. We do not 
consider oratory a mere matter of taste; it is a given 
means for the procurement of a given end; and the fit- 
ness of its means to the attainment of its end shoukl 
be in chief the measure of its merit — of this fitness suc- 
cess ought to be the evidence. The preacher who can 
^nelt his congregation into tears, and excel others in 



xvi PKEFACE. 

his straggle to convert the superfluities of the opuleni 
into a treasuiy for the wretched; — the advocate who 
procures the largest compensation from juries on their 
oaths for injuries which they try;— the man who, like 
Mr. Phillips, can be accused (if ever any man was so 
accused, except himself) by grave lawyers, and before 
grave judges, of having procured a verdict from twelve 
sagacious and most respectable special jurors by fasci- 
nation; of having, by the fascination of his eloquence, 
blinded them to that duty which they were sworn to 
©bserve : — the maa who^an be accused of this on oath 
and the fascination of whose speaking is made a ground 
work, though an unsuccessful one, for setting aside a 
verdict; — h^ may be wrong and ignorant in his study 
knd practice of oratory; but, with all his errors and ig- 
norance, it must be admitted, that he has in some man- 
ner stumbled on \\^ shortest way for attaining the end 
of oratory — that is, giving the most forceful direction 
to human action and determination in particular in- 
stances. His eloquence may be a novelty, but it is 
beyond example successful; and its success and novelty 
may be another explanation for the hostility that as- 
sails. It may be matter of taste, but it certainly would 
not be matter of judgment or prudence in Mr; Phillips 
to depart from a course which has proved most suc- 
cessful, and which has procured fpr hina within the last 



PREFACE. xvii 

year a larger number of readers through the world than 
ever in the same time resorted to the productions of 
any man of these countries. His youth carries with it 
aot only much excuse, but much promise of future im- 
provement; and doubtless he will not neglect to apply 
the fruits of study and the lig|jts of experience to each 
succeeding exertion. But his manner is his own, and 
every man's own manner is his best manner; and so 
long as it works with this* unexampled success, he 
should be slow to adopt the suggestions of his enemies, 
although he should be sedulous in adopting all legiti- 
jnate improvement. To that very exuberance of imagi- 
nation, we do not hesitate to ascribe much of his suc- 
cess ; whilst, therefore, he consents to control it, let 
him be careful lest he clip his wings: nor is the strength 
of this faculty an argument, although it has been made 
an argument, against the str-jngth of his reasoning 
])owers; for let us strip these speeches of every thing, 
whose derivation could be, by any construction, as- 
signed to hisfiincy; let us apply this rule to his judicial 
and political exertions — for instance, to the speech on 
Ciuthrie and Sterne, and the late one to the gentlemen 
of Liverpool — let their topics be translated into plain, 
dull language, and then we would ask, what collection 
of topics could be more judicious, better arranged, or 
classed in a more lucid and consecutive order by the 



xy'in PREFACE. 

most tiresome wisdom of the sagest argiier at the bar? 
Is there not abundance to satisfy the judgment, even if 
tliere were nothing to sway the feelings, or gratify the 
imagination? How preposterous, then, the futile en- 
deavour to undervalue the solidity of the ground-work, 
by withdrawing attention to the beauty of the orna- 
ment; or to maintain the deficiency of strength in the 
base, merely because there appears so much splendour 
ill the structure. 

Unaided by the advantages of fortune or alliance, 
under the frown of political power and the interested 
detraction of professional jealousy, confining the exer- 
cise of that talent which he derives from his God to the 
honour, and succour, and protection of his creatures — 
this interesting and highly gifted young man runs his 
course like a giant, prospering and to prosper; — in the 
court as a flaming sword, leading and lighting the in- 
jured to their own; and in the public assembly expos- 
ing her wrongs — exacting her rights — conquering en- 
vy^trampling on corruption—beloved by his country 
— esteemed by a world — enjoying and deserving an 
unexampled fame—and actively employing the summer 
of his life in gathering honours for his name, and gar 
lands for his grave! 



A SPEECH 

©ELIVEREDAT A PUBLIC DINNER, GIVEN TO 

MR. FINLAY, 

BY THE ROMAJ\r CATHOLICS 
OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SLIGO. 



I THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most 
experienced speaker, might justly tremble in ad- 
dressing you, after the display you have just witnessed. 
What, then, must I feel, who never before addressed a 
public audience? However, it would be but an un- 
worthy affectation in nie, were I to conceal from you, 
the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness^ 
The exaggerated estimate which other countries have 
made of the few services so young a man could render, 
has, I hope, inspired me with the sentiments it ought; 
but her^, I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary sensa- 
tion' — liere, where every object springs some new 
association, and the loveliest objects, mellowed as they 
are by time, rise painted on the eye of memory — here, 
where the light of heaven first blessed my infant view, 
and nature breathed into my infant heart, that ardour 
for my country which nothing but death can chill — 
here, where the scenes of my childhood remind me, 
how innocent I was, and the grave of my father^ gd- 
A 



2 SPEECH 

monlsh me, how pure I should continue — here, standing 
as I do amongst my fairest, fondest, earUest sympathies, 
—such a welcome, operating, not merely as an affec- 
tionate tribute, but as a moral testimony, does indeed 
quite oppress and overwhelm me. 

Oh! beheve me, warm is the heart that feels, and 
willing is the tongue that speaks; and still, I cannot, 
by shaping it to my rudely inexpressive phrase, shock 
the sensibility of a gratitude too full to be suppressed, 
and yet (how far!) too eloquent for language. 

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this 
day it is that which I feel in introducing to the friends 
of my youth, the friend of my adoption, though perhaps 
I am committing one of our imputed blunders, when I 
speak of introducing one whose patriotism has already 
rendered him familiar to every heart in Ireland; a man, 
who, conquering every disadvantage, and spurning 
every difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the 
splendour of an intellect, that at once irradiates and 
consumes them. For the services he has rendered to 
his country, from my heart I tliank him, and, for 
myself, I offer him a personal, it may be a selfish, 
tribute for saving me, by his presence this night, from 
an impotent attempt at his panegyric. Indeed gentle- 
men, you can have httle idea of what he has to endure, 
who, in these times, advocates your cause. Ever}'- 
calumny which the venal and the vulgar, and the vile 
are lavishing upon you, is visited with exaggeration 
upon us. We are called traitors, because we would 
rally round the crown an unanimous people. We are 
called apostates, because we will not persecute 
Christianity. We are branded as separatists, because 



AT SL[GO. 3 

of our endeavours to aiurihllute the fetters that, instead 
of bindnig-, clog the connection. To these may be 
added, the frowns of power, the envy of duhiess, the 
mean mahce of exposed self-interest, and, it may be, 
in despite of all natural affection, even the discounte- 
nance of kindred! — Well, be it so, — 

For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past. 
For thee, my country, welcome, even the last! 

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a 
day when I was bigoted as the blackest ; but I thank 
the Being who gifted me with a mind not quite imper- 
vious to conviction, and I thank you, who afforded such 
convincing testimonies of my error. 1 saw you enduring 
"with patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing 
before the insults of revived aniversaries; in private 
life, exemplary; in public, unoffending; in the hour of 
peace, asserting your loyalty; in the hour of danger, 
proving it. Even when an invading enemy victoriously 
penetrated into the very heart of our country, I sav/ the 
banner of your allegiance beaming refutation on your 
slanderers ; was it a wonder then, that I seized my 
prejudices, and with a blush burned them on the altar 
of my country ! 

The great question of Catholic, shall I not rather 
say, of Irish emancipation, has now assumed that na- 
tional aspect which imperiously challenges the scrutiny 
of every one. While it was shrouded in the mantle of 
religious mystery, with the temple for its sanctuary, 
and the pontiff for its sentinel, tlie vulgar eye might 
'vhrink and the vulgar spirit shudder. But now it has 



<^ SPEECH 

come forth, visible and tangible for the inspection of 
the laity; and I solemnly protest, dressed as it has been 
in the double haberdashery of the English minister and 
the Italian prelate, I know not whether to laugh at its 
appearance, or to loathe its pretensions— to shudder at 
the deformity of its original creation, or smile at the 
grotesqueness of its foreign decorations. Only just ad- 
mire this far-famed security bill,— this motly compound 
of oaths and penalties, which, under the name of eman- 
cipation, would drag your prelates with a halter about 
their necks to the vulgar scrutiny of every village- 
tyrant, in order to enrich a few political traders, and 
distil through some state alembic the miserable rinsings 
of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate aristocracy! 
Only just admire it! Originally engendered by our 
friends the opposition, with a cwc>^oo insidiousness, they 
swindled it into the nest of the treasury ravens, and 
when it had been fairly hatched with the beak of the 
one, and the nakedness of the other, they sent it for 
its feathers to Monseiga-eur Quarai^totti, who has 
obligingly transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, 
the rapacity of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its 
phimassier, to be baptized by the bishops, and received 
cequo gratoque animo by the' people of Ireland!! Oh, 
thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti! Oh, thou super- 
lative coxcomb of the conclave! what an estimate hast 
thou formed of the mii^d of Ireland! Yet why should I 
blame this wretched scribe of the Propaganda ! He had 
every right to speculate as he did; all the chances of 
the calculation were in his favour. Uncommon must 
be the people, over whom centuries of oppression 
liave revolved in vain! Strange must be the mind, 



x\T sligO. b 

which is not subdued by suffering! Sublime the spirit, 
which is not debased by servitude ! God, I give thee 
thanks! — he knew not Ireland. Bent — broken^- 
manacled as she has been, she will not bow to the 
mandate of an Italian slave, transmitted through an 
English vicar. For my own part, as an Irish Protestant, 
I trample to the earth this audacious and desperate 
experiment of authority; and foryou> as Catholics, the 
time is come to give that calumny the lie,, which re- 
presents you as subservient lo a foreign influence* 
That influence, indeed, seems not quite so unbending 
as it suited the purposes of bigotry to represent it, and 
appears now not to have conceded more, only because 
more was not demanded. The theology of the question 
is not forme to argue, it cannot be in better hands 
than in those of your bishops; and I can have no doubt 
that wdien they bring their rank, their learning, their 
talents, their piety, and their patriotism to this sublime 
deliberation,, they will consult the dignity of that 
venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and 
immutable; which timie could not crumble, nor perse- 
cutions shake, nor revolutions cliange; which has stood 
amongst us, like some stupendous and majestic 
Appenine, the earth rocking at its ft,'et, and the 
heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced on the 
base of its eternity; the relic of v/hat was; the solemn 
and sublime memento of what must be! 

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the 
church of England? Undoubtedly it is, \s an Irish- 
man, I feel my liberties interwoven, and the best 
affections of my heart as. it were enjibred with those of 
my Catholic countrymen ; and as a Protestaj^t, con« 
A 2. 



o SPEECH 

vinccd of the purity of my own faith, would I not de 
base it by postponing the powers of reason to the 
suspicious instrumentality of this world's conversion ? 
No; surrendering as I do, with a proud contempt, all 
the degrading advantages with which an ecclesiastical 
usurpation would invest me; so I will not interfere with 
a blasphemous intrusion between any man and his 
Maker. I hold it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to 
rob even a beggar of a single motive for his devotion? 
and I hold it an equal insult to my own faith, to offer 
me any boon for its profession. This pretended 
emancipation-bill passing into a law, would, in my 
mind, strike not a blow at this sect or that sect, but at 
the very vitality of Christianity itself. I am thoroughly 
convinced that the antichristian connection between 
church ancl state, which it was suited to increase, has 
done more mischief to the Gospel interests, than all 
the ravings of infidelity since the crucifixion. The 
sublime Creator of our blessed creed never meant it 
to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the source 
of a corrupt ascendency. He sent it amongst us to heal, 
not to irritate; to associate, not to seclude; to collect 
together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and 
clime and colour in the universe, beneath the spotless 
< wing of its protection. The union of church and state 
i*only converts go.od Christians into bad statesmen, 
and political knaves into pretended Christians. It is 
at best but a foul and adulterous connection, polluting 
the purity of heaven with the abomination of earth, 
and hanging the tatters of a political piety upon the 
cross of an insulted Saviour. Religioi^, Holy REiieioif, 
ought not, in the words of its P'ounder, to be **Ied 



AT SUGG. 7 

into temptation." The hand that holds her chalice 
should be pure, and the priests of her temple should 
be spotless as the vestments of their ministry. Rank 
only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, ornaments 
but disfigure her. I would have her pure, unpensioned, 
unstipendiary; she should rob the earth of nothing but 
its sorrows: a divine arch of promise, her extremeties 
should rest on the horizon, and her span embrace the 
universe; but her only sustenance should be the tears 
that were exhaled and embellished by the sun-beam. 
Such is my idea of what religion ought to be. What 
would this bill make it? A mendicant -of the Castle, a 
menial at the levee, its manual the red-book, its liturgy 
the pension list, its gospel the will of the minister! 
Methinks I see the stalled and fatted victim of its 
creation, cringing with a brute suppliancy through the 
venal mob of ministerial flatterers, crouching to the 
ephemeral idol of the day, and, like the devoted 
sacrifice of ancient heathenism, glorying in the garland 
that only decorates him for death ! I will read to you 
the opinionsof a celebrated Irishman, on the suggestion 
in his day, of a bill similar to that now proposed for 
our oppression. He was a man who added to the pride 
not merely of his country but of his species — a man 
who robed the very soul of inspiration in the splen- 
dours of a pure and overpowering eloquence. I allude 
to Mr. Burke — an authority at least to which the 
sticklers for establishments can offer no objection. 
" Before I had written thus far," says he, in his letter 
on the penal laws, "I heard of a scheme for giving to 
the Castle the patronage of the presiding members of 
the Catholic clergy. At first I could scarcely credit il. 



8 SPEECH 

fori believe it is the first time that the presentation to 
other people's alms has b^en desired in any country. 
Never were the members of one religious sect fit to 
appoint the pastors to another. It is a great deal to 
suppose that the present Castle would nominate bishops 
for the Roman church in Ireland, with a religious re- 
gard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps 
they dare not do it. But suppose them to be as well 
inclined, as I know that I am, to do the Catholics all 
kinds of justice, I declare I would not, if it were in 
my power, take that patronage on myself. I know I 
ought not to do it. I belong to another community; and 
it would be an intolerable usurpation in me, where I 
conferred no benefit, or even if I did confer temporal 
advantages. How can the Lord Lieutenant form the 
least judgment on their merits so as to decide which 
of the popish priests is fit to be a bishop? It cannot be. 
The idea is ridiculous. He will hand them over to 
Loixls-Lieutenant of counties, justices of the peace, 
and others who, for the purpose of vexing and turning 
into derision this miserable people, will pick out the 
worst and most obnoxious they can find amongst the 
clergy to govern the rest. Whoever is complained 
against by his brother, will be considered as perse- 
cuted; whoever is censured by his superior, will be 
looked upon as oppressed; whoever is careless in his 
opinions, loose in his morals, will be called a liberal 
man, and will be supposed to have incurred hatred be- 
cause he was not a bigot. Informers, tale-bearers, per- 
verse and obstinate men, flatterers, who turn their 
back upon their flock, and court the Protestant gentle- 
men of their country, will be the objects of prefer- 



AT SLIGO. 9 

iTient, and then I run no risk in foretelling, that what- 
ever order, quiet, and morality you have in the country 
will be lost." Now, let me ask you, is it to such 
characters as those described by Burke, that you would 
delegate the influence imputed to your priesthood? 
Believe me, you would soon see them transferring their 
devotion from the Cross to the Castle; wearing their 
saCred vestments but as a masquerade appendage, and, 
under the degraded passport of the Almighty's name, 
sharing the pleasures of the court, and the spoils of the 
people. When I say this, I am bound to add, and I do 
so from many proud and pleasing recollections, that I 
think the impression on the Catholic clergy of the pre- 
sent day would be late, and would be delible. But it is 
human nature. Rare are the instances in which a con- 
tact with the court has not been the beginning of cor- 
ruption. The man of God is pecuharly disconnected 
with it. It directly violates his special mandate, who 
took his birth from the manger, and his disciples from 
the fishing-boat. Judas was the first who received the 
money of power, and it ended in the disgrace of his 
creed, and the death of his master. If I was a Catholic, 
I would peculiarly deprecate any interference with my 
priesthood. Indeed, I do not think, in any one respect 
in which we should wish to view the delegates of the 
Almighty, that, making fair allowances for human in- 
firmity, they could be amended. The Catholic clergy 
of Ireland are rare examples of the doctrines they in» 
culcate. Pious in their habits, almost primitive in their 
manners, they have no care but their flock — no study 
but their Gospel. It is not in the gaudy ring of courtly 
dissipation that you will find the Muhkays, the Cop- 



10 SPEECH 

FINGERS, and the Moylands of the present day — not at 
the levee, or the lounge, or the election-riot. No; you 
will find them wherever good is to be done or evil to 
be corrected — rearing their mitres in the van of misery, 
consoling the captive, reforming the convict, enriching 
the orphan ; ornaments of this world, and emblems of 
a better: preaching their God through the practice of 
every virtue ; monitors at the confessional, apostles in 
the pulpit, saints at the death-bed, holding the sacred 
water to the lip of sin, or pouring the redeeming 
unction on the agonies of despair. Oh, I would hold 
him little better than the Promethean robber, who 
would turn the fire of their eternal altar into the im- 
pure and perishable mass of this world's preferment. 
Better by far that the days of ancient barbarism should 
revive — better that your religion should again take 
refuge among the fastnesses of the mountain, and the 
solitude of the cavern — better that the rack of a 
murderous bigotry should again terminate the miseries 
of your priesthood, and that the gate of freedom should 
be only open to them through the gate of martyrdom, 
than they should gild their missals with the wages of a 
court, and expect their ecclesiastical promotion, not 
from their superior piety, but their comparative prosti- 
tution. But why this interference with your principles 
of conscience? Why is it that they will not erect your 
liberties save on the ruin of your temples ? Why is it 
that in the day of peace they demand securities from a 
people who in the day of danger constituted their 
strength.'* When were they denied every security that 
was reasonable? Was it in 1776, when a cloud of ene- 
mies, hovering on our coast, saw every heart a shield, 



AT SLIGO. 11 

and every hill a fortress? Did the}' want securities in 
Catholic Spain? Were they denied securities in Catholic 
Portugal ? AVhat is their security to day in Catholic 
Canada ? Return — return to us our own glorious Wel- 
lington, and tell incredulous England what was her 
security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, or on the 
summit of Barrossa! Rise, libelled martyrs of the 
Peninsula! — rise from your "gory bed," and give 
security for your childless parents ! No, there is not a 
Catholic family in Ireland, that ibr the glory of Great 
Britain is not weeping over a child's, a brother's or a 
parent's grave, and yet still she clamours for securities! 
Oh, Prejudice, where is thy reason! Oh, Bigotry! where 
is thy blush ! If ever there was an opportunity for 
England to combine gratitude with justice, and dignity 
with safety, it is the present. Now, when Irish blodd 
has crimsoned the cross upon her naval flag, and an 
Irish hero strikes the harp to victory upon the summit 
of the Pyrenees, England— England! do not hesitate. 
This hour of triumph may be but the hour of trial ; 
another season may see the splendid panorama of 
European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, 
and glittering beneath the ruins of another capitol — 
perhaps of London. Who can say it? A few months 
since, Moscow stood as splendid as secure. Fair rose 
the morn on the patriarchal city — the empress of her 
nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of stran- 
gers, her thousand spires pierced the very heavens, 
and her domes of gold reflected back the sun-beams. 
The spoiler came; he marked her for his victim; and, 
as if his very glance was destiny, even before the night- 
fall, with all her pomp, and wealth, and happiness, she 



12 SPEECH 

withered from the world ! A heap of ashes told where 
once stood Moscow ! Merciful God, if this lord of deso- 
lation, heading" his locust legions, were to invade our 
country ; though I do not ask what would be your 
determination; though, in the language of our young 
enthusiast, I am sure you would oppose him with ** a 
sword in one hand, and a torch in the other;" still I 
do ask with fearlessness, upon what single principle of 
policy or of justice, could the advocates for your ex- 
clusion solicit your assistance — could they expect you 
to support a constitution from whose benefits you were 
debarred ? AVith what front could they ask you to 
recover an ascendency, which in point of fact was but 
re-establishing your bondage ? 

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland 
ready to join this despot— "a French party," as Mr. 
Grattan thought it decent, even in the very senate- 
house, to promulgate. Sir, I speak the universal voice 
of Ireland when I say, she spurns the imputation. 
There is no " French party," here, but there is — and 
it would be strange if there was not — there is an Irish 
party — men who cannot bear to' see their country- 
taunted with the mockery of a constitution — men who 
will be content with no connection that refuses them a 
community of benefits while it imposes a comifiunity 
of privations — men who sooner than see this land 
polKited by the footsteps of a slave, would wish the 
ocean-wave became its sepulchre, and that the orb of 
heaven forgot where it existed. It has been said too 
(and when we w^ere to be calumniated, what has not 
been said ?) that Irishmen are neither fit for freedom 
or grateful for favours. In the first place, I deny that 



AT SLIGO. IS 

to be a favour which is a right; and in the next place, 
1 utterly deny that a system of conciliation has ever 
been adopted with respect to Ireland. Try thenn, and, 
my life on it, they will be found grateful. I think I 
know my countrymen ; they cannot help being grate- 
ful for a benefit ; and there is no country on the earth 
where one would be conferred with more characteristic 
benevolence. They are, emphatically, the school-boys 
of the heart — a people of sympathy ; their acts spring 
instinctively from their passions; by nature ardent, by 
instinct brave, by inheritance generous. The children 
of impulse, they cannot avoid their virtues; and to be 
other than noble, they must not only be unnatural but 
unnational. Put my panegyric to the test. Enter the 
hovel of the Irish peasant. I do not say you will find 
the frugality of the Scotch, the comfort of the English, 
or the fantastic decorations of the French Cottager \, 
but I do say, within those wretched bazaars of mud and 
misery, you will find sensibility the most affecting, 
politeness the most natural, hospitality the most grate- 
ful, merit the mostuncoT)scious; their look is eloquence, 
their smile is love, their retort is wit, their remark is 
wisdom — not a wisdom borrowed from the dead, but 
that with which nature has herself inspired them ; an 
acute observance of the passing scene, and a dee[) 
insight into the motives of its agent. Try to deceive 
them, and see with what shrewdness they will detect ; 
try to outwit them, and see with what hamour they 
will elude ; attack them with argument, and you will 
stand amazed at the strength of their expression, the. 
rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their gesture! 
In short, God seems to have formed our country like 
B 



U SPEECH 

our people; he has thrown round the one its wild, 
magnificent, decorated rudeness; he has infused into 
the other the simplicity of genius and the seeds of 
virtue: he says andibly to us, " Give them cultivation.'* 
This is the way, Gentlemen, in which I have al- 
ways looked upon your question — ^not as a party, or a 
sectarian, or a Catholic, but as an Irish question. Is it 
possible that any man can seriously believe the para- 
lyzing five millions of such a people asl have been de- 
scribing, can be a benefit to the empire ! Is there any 
man who deserves the name not of a statesman but of 
a rational being, who can think it politic to rob such a 
multitude of all the energies of an honourable ambition! 
Look to Protestant Ireland, shooting over the empire 
those rays of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, 
that have at once embellished and preserved it. I speak 
not of a former era. I refer not for my example to the 
day just passed when our Burkes, our Barrys, and our 
Goldsmiths, exiled by this system from their native 
shore, wreathed the " immortal shamrock" round the 
brow of painting, poetry, and eloquence ! But now, 
even while I speak, who leads the British senate ? A 
Protestant Irishman! Who guides the British arms? 
A Protestant Irishman! And why, why is Catholic Ire- 
land, with her quintuple population, stationary and 
silent? Have physicsl causes neutralized its energies ? 
Has the religion of Christ stupefied its intellect ? Ha9 
the God of mankind become the partisan of a monopoly, 
and put an interdict on its advancement? Stranger, do 
not ask the bigoted and pampered renegade who has 
an interest in deceiving you ; bnt open the penal 
statutes, and weep tears of blood over the reason. 



AT SLlGOi W 

Com Cj come yourself, and see this unhappy people;, 
see the Irishman, the only alien in Ireland, in rags and 
wretchedness, staining the sweetest scenery ever eye 
reposed on, persecuted by the extorting middleman 
of some absentee landlord, plundered by the lay -proc- 
tor of some rapacious and unsympathizing incumbent, 
bearing, through life but insults and injustice, snd be- 
reaved even of any hope in death by the heart rending 
reflection that he leaves his children to bear like their 
father an abominable bondage ! Is this the fact ? Let 
any man who doubts it walk out into your streets, and 
see the consequences of such a system; see it rearing 
up crowds in a kind of apprenticeship to the prison, 
absolutely permitted by their parents from utter 
despair to lisp the alphabet and learn the rudiments of 
profligacy? For my part, never did I meet one of these 
yonthful assemblages without feeling within me a 
melancholy emotion. How often have I thought, within 
that little circle of neglected triflers who seem to have 
been born in caprice and bred in orphanage, there 
may exist some mind formed of the finest mould, and 
wrought for immortality; a soul swelling with the ener- 
gies and stamped with the patent of the I>eity, which 
under proper culture might perhaps bless, adorn, im- 
mortalize, or ennoble empires; some Cmstcinnatus, in 
whose breast the destinies of a nation may lie dormant;^ 
some MiLTOJiT, "pregnant with celestial fire;" some 
CuiiiiAiy> who, when thrones were cumbledand dynas- 
ties forgotten, might stand the landmark of his 
country's genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and 
national dissolution, a mental pyramid in the solitude of 



16 SPEECH 

time, beneath whose shade things might moulder, and 
round whose summit eternity must play. Even in such 
a circle the young Demcsthejtes might have once been 
found, and Homer, the disgrace and glory of his age^ 
have sung neglected! Have not other nations witnessed 
those things, and who shall say that nature has peculi- 
arly degraded the intellect of Ireland ? Oh ! my 
countrymen, let us hope that under better auspices and 
a sounder policy, the ignorance that thinks so may- 
meet its refutation. Let us turn from the bhght and 
ruin of this wintry day to the fond anticipation of a 
happier period, when our prostrate land shall stand 
erect among the nations, fearless and unfettered; her 
brow blooming with the wreath of science, and her 
path strewed with the offerings of art ; the breath of 
heaven blessing her flag, the extremities of earth 
acknowledging her name, her fields waving with the 
fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the contri- 
butions of commerce, and her temples vocal with un- 
restricted piety. Such is the ambition of the true 
patriot; such are the views for which we are calumni- 
ated ! Oh, divine ambition! Oh, delightful calumny ! 
Happy he who shall see thee accomphshed! Happy he 
who through every peril toils for thy attainment! Pro- 
ceed, friend of Ireland and partaker of her wrongs, 
proceed undaunted to this glorious consummation. 
Fortune will not gild, power will not ennoble theer 
but thou shalt be rich in the love and titled by the 
blessings of thy country; thy path shall be illumined by 
the public eye, thy labours enlightened by the pubhc 
gratitude; and oh, remember— amid the impediments 



AT SLIGO. 17 

with which corruption will oppose, and the dejection 
with which disappointments may depress you — re- 
member you are acquiring a name to be cherished by 
the future generations of eartli, long after it has been 
enrolled amongst the inheritors of heaven. 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED At 

AN AGGREGATE MEETING 

OF 
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF CORK. 



It is with no small degree of self-congratulation that 
I at length find myself in a province which eveiy 
glance of the eye, and every throb of the heart, tells 
me is truly Irish ; and that congratulation is not a little 
enhanced by finding that you receive me not quite as 
a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the Christian without 
regard to his creed, if to love the country but the 
more for its calamities, if to hate oppression though it 
be robed in power, if to venerate integrity though it 
pine under persecution, gives a man any claim to your 
recognition ; then, indeed, I am not a stranger amongst 
you. There is a bond of union between brethren, 
however distant; there is a sympathy between the 
virtuous, however separated ; there is a heaven-born 
instinct by which tl^a associates of the heart become at 
once acquainted, and kindred natures as it were by 
magic see in the face of a stranger, the features of a 



AT GOiUv. 19 

friencl. Thus it is that, though v\'e never met, you hail 
in me the sweet association, and I feel myself amongst 
you even as if I were in the home of my nativity. But 
this my knowledge of you was not left to chance ; nor 
was it left to the records of your charity, the memorials 
of your patriotism, your municipal magnificence, or 
your commercial splendour ; it came to me hallowed 
by tlie accents of that tongue on which Ireland has so 
often hung with ecstasy, heightened by the eloquence 
and endeared by the sincerity of, I hope, our mutual 
friend. Let me congratulate him on having become in 
some degree naturalized in a province, where the 
spirit of the elder day seems to have lingered; and 
jet me congratulate you on the acquisition of a man 
who is at once the zealous advocate of your cause, and 
a practical instance of the unjustice of your oppressions. 
Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if splendid talents, 
if indeftitigable industry, if great research, if unsullied 
principle, if a heart full of the finest affections, if a 
mind matured in every manly accomplishment, in short, 
if every noble, pubUc quality, mellowed and reflected 
in the pure mirror of domestic virtue, could entitle a 
subject to distinction in a state, Mr. O'Connel should 
be distinguished ; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, 
and his curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton ! he prefers 
his conscience to a place, and the lo\^e of his country 
to a participation in her plunder ! Indeed he will never 
rise. If he joined the bigots of my sect, he might be a 
sergeant; if he joined the infidels of your sect, he 
might enjoy a pension, and there is no knowing whether 
some Orange-corporator, or an Orange-anniversary, 
might not modestly yield him the precedence of 



20 SPEECH 

giving "the glorious and immortal memory." Oli, yes, 
he might be priviledged to get drunk in gratitude to 
the man who colonized ignorance in his native land, 
and left to his creed the legacy of legalized persecution, 
Nov would he stand alone, no matter what might be 
the measure of his disgrace, or the degree of his 
dereliction. You will know there are many of your 
own community wOio would leave him at the distance- 
post. In contemplating their recreancy, I should be 
almost tempted to smile at the exhibition of their 
pretentions, if there was not a kind of moral melancholy 
intermingled, that changed satire into pity, and ridicule 
into contempt. For my part, I behold them in the 
apatjjy of their servitude, as I would some miserable 
maniae in the contentment of his captivity. Poor 
creature! when 'all that raised liim from the brute is 
levelled, and his glorious intellect is mouldering in 
ruins, you may see him with his song of triumph, and 
his crown of straw, a fancied freemen mid the clanking 
of his chains, and an imaginary monarch beneath the 
inflictions of his keeper! Merciful God! is it not 
almost an argument for the sceptic and the disbehever, 
v/hen we see the human shape almost without an 
aspiration of the human soul, separated by no boundary 
from the beasts that perish beholding with indifference 
the captivity of their country, the persecution of their 
creed, and the helpless, hopeless destiny of their 
children? But they have nor creed nor consciences, 
nor country ; their God is gold, their gospel is a con- 
tract, their church a counting-house, their characters 
a commodity ; they never pray but for the opportuni- 
ties of corruption, and hold their consoiencesj as they 



AT CORK. 21 

do their government-debentures, at a price propor- 
j^^oned to the misfortunes of their country. But let us 
^Hbrnfrom those mendicants of disgrace : though Ireland 
' is doomed to the stain of their birth, her mind need 
not be sulhed by their contemplation. I turn from 
them with pleasure to the contemplation of your cause, 
which, as fir as argument can affect it, stands on a 
sublime and splendid elevation. Every obstacle has 
vanished into air; every favourable circumstance has 
hardened into adamant. The Pope, whom childhood 
was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, and age 
shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, has by his 
example put the princes of Christendom to shame. 
This day of miracles, in which the human heart has 
been strung to its extremest point of energy ; this day, 
to which posterity will look for instances of every 
crime and every virtue, holds not in its page of wonders 
a more sublime phenomenon than that calumniated 
pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of human elevation, 
surrounded by the pomp of the Vatican and the splen- 
dours of the court, pouring the mandates of Chbist 
fromt the throne of the C^sars, nations were his snb- 
jects, kings were his companions, religion was his 
handmaid ; he went forth gorgeous with the accumula- 
ted dignity of ages, every knee bending, and every 
eye blessing the prince of one world and the prophet 
of another. Have we not seen him, in one moment, his 
crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne a 
a shadow, his home a dungeon ! But if we have 
Catholics, it was only to shew how inestimable is human 
virtue compared with human grandeur ; it was only to 
shew those whose fiVith was faihng, and whose fears 



'2'2 SPEECH 

were strengthening, t|?at the simplicity of the patri- 
archs, the piety of the saints, and the patience of the 
martyrs, had not v/holiy vanished. Perhaps it was also 
ordained to shev/ the bigot at home, as well as the 
tyrant abroad, that though the person might be chained, 
and the motive calumniated, Religion was still strong 
enough to support her sons, and to confound, if she 
could not reclaim, her enemies. No threats could awe, 
no promises could tempt, no sufferings could appal 
him ; mid the damps of his dungeon he dashed away 
the cup in which the pearl of his liberty was to be 
dissolved. Only reflect on the state of the world at 
that moment ? All around him was convulsed, the very 
foundations of the earth seemed giving way, the 
comet was let loose that " from its fiery hair shook 
pestilence and death," the twilight was gathering, the 
tempest was roaring, the darkness was at hand ; but he 
towered subhme, like the last mountain in the deluge 
— majestic, not less in his elevation than in his solitude, 
immutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the 
last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-place of 
heaven's light ! Thus have the terrors of the Vatican- 
retreated ; thus has that cloud whicli hovered o'er 
your cause brightened at once into a sign of your faith 
and an assurance of your victory. — Another obstacle, 
the omnipotence of Frak^ce ; I know it was a pretence, 
but it was made an obstacle — \Vf»at has become of it ? 
The spell of her invincibility destroyed, the spirit of 
her armies broken, her immense boundary dismember- 
ed, and the lord of her empire become the exile of a 
rock. She allows fancy no fear, and bigotry no spe- 
ciousness; and, as if in the very operation of the 



AT CORK. US 

change to point the purpose of your redemption, the 
hand that replanted the rejected lily was that of an 
Irish Catholic. Perhaps it is not also unworthy of remark, 
that the last day of her triumph, and the first of her 
decline, was that on which her insatiable chieftain 
smote the holy head of your religion. You will hardly 
suspect I am imbued with the follies of superstition ; 
but when the man now unborn shall trace the story of 
that eventful day, he will see the adopted child of 
fortune borne on the wings of victory from clime to 
clime, marking every movement ^vith a triumph, and 
every pause Vv^ith a crown, till time, space, seasons, nay, 
even nature herself, seeming to vanish from before 
him, in the blasphemy of his ambition he smote the 
apostle of his God, and dared to raise the everlasting 
Cross amid his perishable trophies ! 1 am no fanatic, 
but, is it not remarkable? ^^^7 it not be one of those 
signs which the Deity has sometimes given in compas- 
sion to our infirmity ; signs, which in the punishment 
of our nation" not unfrequently denote the warning 
to another ; — 

" Signs sent by God to mark the will of Heaven, 
Signs, which bid nations weep and be forgiven." 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; and 
those whose consciousness taught them to expect what 
your loyalty should have taught them to repel, can no 
longer oppose you from the terrors of invasion. Thus, 
then, the papal phantom and the French threat have 
vanished into notliing.— Another obstacle, the tenets 
of your creed. Has England still to learn them? I wiii 



24 SPEECH 

tell her where. Let her ask Canada, the last plank of 
of her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, the 
first omen of her European splendour. Let her ask 
Spain, the most Catholic country in the universe, her 
Catholic friends, her Catholic allies, her rivals in the 
triuniph, her reliance in the retreat, her last stay when 
the world had deserted her. They must have told her 
on the field of blood, whether it was true that they 
^* kept nojaith ivith heretics.^* Alas, alas! how miserable 
a thing is bigotry, when every friend puts it to the 
blush, and every triumph but rebukes its weakness. 
If England continued still to accredit this calumny, I 
would direct her for conviction to the hero for whose 
gift alone she owes us an eternity of gratitude; whom 
we have seen leading the van of universal emancipa- 
tion, decking his wreath with the flowers of every soil, 
and filling his army with the soldiers of every sect; 
before whose splendid dawn, every tear exhaling and 
every vapour vanishing, the colours of the European 
world have revived, and the spirit of European liberty 
(may no crime avert the omen!) seems to have arisen! 
Suppose he vvas a Catholic, could this have been? 
Suppose Gatholics did not follow him, could this have 
been ? Did the Catholic Cortes inquire his faith when 
they gave him the supreme command.'' Did the Regent 
of Portugal withhold from his creed the reward of his 
valour? Did the CathoUc soldier pause at Salamanca 
to dispute upon polemics ? Did the Catholu; chieftain 
prove upon Barrossa that he kept no faith with 
heretics, or did the creed of Spain, the same with 
that of France, the opposite of that of England, pre- 
vent their association in the field of liberty ? Oh, no. 



AT CORK. 25 

no, no : the citizen of every clime, the fi'iend of every 
colour, and the child of every creed, liberty walks 
abroad in the ubiquity of her benevolence ; alike to 
her the varieties of faith and the vicissitudes of country; 
she has no object but the happiness of man, no bounds 
but the extremities of creation. Yes, yes, it was re- 
served for Wellington to redeem his own country 
when he was regenerating every other. It was re- 
served for him to show how vile were the aspersions 
on your creed, how generous were the glovvings of 
your gratitude. He was a Protestant, yet Catholics 
trusted him ; he was a Protestant yet Catholics ad- 
vanced him ? he is a Protestant Knight in Catholic 
Portugal, he is a Protestant Duke in Catholic Spain, 
lie is a Protestant commander of Catholic armies : he 
is more, he is the living proof of the Catholic's libe- 
rality, and the undeniable refutation of the Protestant*s 
injustice. Gentlemen, as a Protestant, though I may 
blush for the bigotry of many of my creed who con- 
tinue obstinate in the teeth of this conviction, still 
were T a Catholic I should feel little triumph in the 
victory. I should only hang my head at the distresses 
which this warfare occasioned to my country. I should 
only think how long she had writhed in the agony of 
her disunion ; how long she had bent, fettered by 
slaves, cajoled by blockheads, and plundered by ad- 
venturers ; the proverb of the fool, the prey of the 
politician, the dupe of the designing, the experiment 
of the desperate, struggling as it were between her 
own fanatical and infatuated parties, those hell-engen- 
dered serpents which enfold her, like the Trojan seer, 
even at the worship of her altars, and crush her tf» 
G 



26 SPEECH 

death in the very embraces of her children ! It is time 
(is it not?) that she should be extricated. The act 
would be proud, the means would be Christian; mutual 
forbearance, mutual indulgence, mutual concession: I 
would say to the Protostant, Concede ; I would say to 
the Catholic, Forgive ; I would say to both, Though 
you bend not at the same shrine, you have a common 
God, and a common country; the one has commanded 
love, the other kneels to you for peace. This hostility 
of her sects has been the disgrace, the peculiar dis- 
grace of Christianity. The Gentoo loves his cast, so 
does the Mahometan, so ^ioes the Hindoo, whom 
England out of the abundance of her charity is about 
to teach her creed;— I hope she may not teach her 
]:)ractice. But Christianity, Christianity alone exhibits 
lier thousand sects, each denouncing his neighbour 
here, in the name of God, and damning hereafter out 
of pure devotion! "You're a heretic," says the Catholic; 
"You're a Papist." says the Protestant; "1 appeal to 
Saint Peter," exclaims the Catholic: " I appeal to Saint 
Athanasius," cries the Protestant: " and if it goes to 
damning, he's as good at it as any saint in the calen- 
dar." " You'll all be damned eternally," moans out the 
Methodist; " Pm the electl" Thus it is, you see, each 
has his anathema, his accusation, and his retort, and 
in the end Rehgion is the victim! The victory of each 
is the overthrow of all; and. Infidelity, laughing at the 
contest, writes the refutation of their creed in the 
blood of the combatants ! I wonder if this reflection 
has ever struck any of those reverend dignitaries who 
rear their mitres against Catholic emancipation. Has it 
ever glanced across their Christian zeal, if the story 



AT CORK. 27 

wf our country should have casually reached the valleys 
of Hindostan, with what an argument they are furnish- 
ing the heathen world against their sacred missionary ? 
In what terms could the Christian ecclesiastic answer 
the Eastern Bramin, when he replied to his exhorta- 
tions in the language such as this? " Father, we have 
heard your doctrine: it is splendid in theory, specious 
in promise, sublime in prospect; like the world to 
which it leads, it is rich in the miracles of light. But, 
Father, we have heard that there are times when its 
rays vanish and leave your sphere in darkness, or when 
your only lustre arises from meteors of fire, and moons 
of blood : we have heard of the verdant island which 
the Great Spirit has raised in the bosom of the waters 
with such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave she 
has usurped worships the loveliness of her intrusion. 
The sovereign of our forests is not more generous in 
his anger than her sons; the snov/.flake, ere it falls on 
the tnountain, is not purer than her daughters ; little 
inland seas reflect the splendours of her landscape, 
and her valleys smile at the story of the serpentl 
Father, is it true that this isle of the sun, this people of 
the morning, find the fury of the ocean in your creed, 
and more than the venom of the viper in your policy? 
Is it true that for six hundred years, her peasant has 
not tasted peace, nor her piety rested from persecu* 
tion? Oh! Brama, defend us from the God of the Chris- 
tian ! Father, father return to your brethren, retrace 
the waters; we may live in ignorance, but we live in 
love, and we will not taste the tree that gives us evil 
when it gives us wisdom. The heart is our guide, 
smtuj-e is our gospel; in the imitation of our fathers we 



2S SPEECH 

found our hope, and, if we err, on the virtue of our 
motives we rely for our redemption." How would the 
missionaries of the mitre answer him? How will they 
answer that insulted Being of \yhose creed their con- 
duct carries the refutation ?— But to what end do I 
argue with the Bigot? — a wretch, whom no philosophy 
can humanize, no charity soften, no religion reclaim; 
no miracle convert; a monster, who, red with the fires 
of hell, and bending under the crimes of earth, erects 
his murderous divinity upon a throne of sculls, and 
would gladly feed even with a brother's blood the 
cannibal appetite of his rejected altar! His very interest 
cannot soften him into humanity. Surely, if it could, no 
man would be found mad enough to advocate a system 
which cankers the very heart of society, and under- 
mines the natural resources of government ; which 
takes away the strongest excitement to industry, by 
closing up every avenue to laudable ambition ; which 
administers to the vanity or the vice of a party, when 
it should only study the advantage of a people; and 
holds out the perquisites of state as an impious bounty^ 
on the persecution of religion. — I have already showa 
that the power of the Pope, that the power of France, 
and that the tenets of your creed, were but imaginary 
auxiliaries to this system. Another pretended obstacle 
has, however, been opposed to your emancipation. 
I allude to the danger arising from a foreign influence. 
What a triumphant answer can you give to that! 
Metliinks, as lately, I see the assemblage of your 
hallowed hierarchy surrounded by the priesthood, and 
followed by the people, waving aloft the crucifix ot 
Christ alike against the seductions of the court, and 



AT CORK. 29 

the commands of the conclave! Was it not a delightful, 
M heart-cheering spectacle, to see that holy band of 
Brothers preferring the chance of martyrdom to the 
"certainty of promotion, and postponing all the grati- 
fications of worldly pride, to the severe but heaven- 
gaining glories of their poverty? They acted honestly, 
and they acte^d wisely also ; for I say here, before the 
largest assembly I ever saw in any country — and I 
beheve you are almost all Catholics — I say here, that if 
the see of Rome presumed to impose any temporal 
mandate directly or indirectly on the Irish people, the 
Irish bishops should at once abandon it, or the flocks, 
one and all, would abjure and banish both of them to- 
gether. History affords us too fatal an example of the 
perfidious, arrogant, and venal interference of a papal 
usurper of former days in the temporal jurisdiction of 
this country ; an interference assumed without right, 
exercised without principle, and followed by calamities 
apparently without end. Thus, then, has every obstacle 
vanished; but it has done more — every obstacle has, as 
it were, by miracle, produced a powerful argument in 
your favour ! How do 1 prove it ? Follow me in my 
proofs, and you will see by what links the chain is 
united. The power of Napoleon was the grand and 
leading obstacle to your emancipation. That power led 
him to the menace of an Irish invasion. What did that 
prove ? Only the sincerity of Irish allegiance. On the 
very threat, we poured forth our volunteers, our 
yeomen, and our militia; and the country became en- 
circled with an armed and a loyal popidation. Thus, 
then, the calumny of your disaffection vanished. That 
power next led him to the invasion of Portugal. What 
C2 



30 SPEECH 

did it prove? Only the good faith of Catholic^ allegiance. 
Every field in the Peninsula saw the CathoUc Por- 
tuguese hail the English Protestant as a brother and a 
friend joined in the same pride and the same peril. 
Thus, then, vanished the slander that you could not 
keep faith with heretics. That power next led him 
to the imprisonment of the Pontiff, so Jong suspected 
of being quite ready to sacrifice every thing to his 
interest and his dominion. What did that prove? The 
strength of his principles, the purity of his faith, the 
disinterestedness of his practice. It proved a life spent 
in the study of the saints, and ready to be closed by 
an imitation of the martyrs. Thus, also, was the head 
of your religion vindicated to Europe. There remained 
behind but one impediment — your liability to a foreign^ 
influence. Now mark ! The Pontiff's captivity led to 
the transmission of Quarantotti*s rescript ; and, on its 
arrival, from the priest to the peasant, there was not 
a Catholic in the land, who did not spurn the document 
of Italian audacity! Thus, then, vanished also the phan- 
tom of a foreign influence! Is this conviction? Is it not 
the hand of God in it ? Oh yes ! for observe what fol- 
lowed. The very moment that power, which was the 
first and last leading argument against you, had, by its 
special operation, banished every obstacle; that power 
itself, as it were by enchantment, evaporated at once; 
and peace with Europe took away the last pretence for 
your exclusion. Peace with Europe! alas, alas, there 
is no peace far Ireland: the universal pacification was 
but the signal for renewed hostility to us, and the < 
mockery of its preliminaries were tolled through our 
provinces by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it not 



AT COHK. 31 

time that tliis hostility should cease? If ever there was 
a day when it was necessary, that day undoubtedly 
I exists no longer. The continent is triumphant, the 
' Peninsula is free, France is our ally. The hapless house 
which gave birth to Jacobinism is extinct for ever. The 
Pope has been found not only not hostile, but com- 
plying. Indeed, if England would recollect the share 
you had in these sublime events, the very recollection 
should subsidize her into gratitude. But should she 
not — should she, with a baseness monstrous and un- 
paralled, forget our sei'vices, she has still to study a 
tremendous lesson. The ancient order of Europe, it is 
true, is restored, but what restored it ? Coahtion after 
coalition had crumbled away before the might of the 
conqueror; crowns were but ephemeral; monarchs 
only the tenants of an hour; the descendants of 
Frederick dwindled into a vassal ; the heir of Peter 
shrunk into the recesses of his frozen desert; the suc- 
cessor of Charles roamed a vagabond, not only throne- 
less but houseless; every evening sun set upon a 
change; every morning dawned upon some new con- 
vulsion: in short, the whole political globe quivered as 
with an earthquake, and who could tell what venerable 
monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid, 
frightful, and reposeless heavings of the French vol- 
cano ! What gave Europe peace and England safety 
amid this palsy of her Princes? Was it not the Land- 
vvehr and the Landsturm and the Levy en Masse? Was 
it not the People? — that first and last, and best and 
noblest, as well as safest security of a virtuous govern- 
ment. It is a glorious lesson ; she ought to study it in 
this hour of safety ; but should she not— 



32 SPEECH 

*' Oh wo be to the Prince who rulds by fear. 
When danger comes upon him!" 



t 



She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom; I expect 
it from her policy; I claim it from her justice; I de- 
mand it from her gratitude. She must at length see 
that there is a gross mistake in the management of Ire- 
land. No wise man ever yet imagined injustice to be 
his interest ; and the minister who thinks he serves a 
state by upholding the most irritating and the most 
I impious of all monopolies, will one day or other find 

himself miserably mistaken. This system of persecution 
is not the way to govern this country; at least to govern 
it with any happiness to itself, or advantage to its 
rulers. Centuries have proved its total inefficienc}^, 
and if it be continued for centuries, the proofs will be 
but multiplied. Why, however, should I blame the 
English people, when I see our own representatives so 
shamefully neghgent of our interest ? The other da}^, 
for instance, when Mr. Peele introduced, aye, and 
passed too, his three newly invented penal bills, to the 
rrecessity of which, every assizes in Ireland, and as 
liqnest a judge as ever dignified or redeemed tlie 
f§B'/:'^livm\ne, has given the refutation ; why was it that no 
^'IM' '' Irish member rose in his place to vindicate his country? 
Where were the nominal representatives of Ireland ?. 
Where were the renegade revilers of the demagogue? 
Where were the noisy proclaimers of the board? What, 
was there not one voice to own the country? Was the 
> patriot of 17'82 an assenting auditor? Were our hundred 
itinerants mute and motionless — *^ quite chop-fallen?" 
or is it only when Ireland is slandered and her motives 



At CORK, 33 

' misrepresented, and her oppressions are basely and 
falsely denied, that their venal throats are ready to 
echo the chorus of ministerial calumny ? Oh, I should 
I not have to ask those questions, if in the late contest 
for this city, you had prevailed, and sent Hutchij^tsos' 
into Parliament: he would have risen, though aloncy as 
I have often seen him — richer not less in hereditary 
fame, than in personal accomplishments; the ornament 
of Ireland as she is, the solitary remnant of what she 
was. If slander dare asperse her, it would not have 
done so with impunity. He would have encouraged 
the timid ; he would have shamed the recreant ; and 
though he could not save us from chains, he would at 
least have shielded us from calumny. Let me hope that 
his absence shall be but of short duration, and that 
this city will earn an additional claim to the gratitude 
of the country, by electing him her representative. I 
scarcely know him but as a public man, and considering 
the state to which we are reduced by the apostacy of 
some, and the ingratitude of others, and venality of 
more, — I say you should inscribe the conduct of such a 
man in the manuals of your devotion, and in the primers 
of your children, but above all, you should act on it 
yourselves. Let me intreat of you, above all things to 
sacrifice any personal differences amongst yourselves, 
for the great cause in which you are embarked. Re- 
member, the contest is for your children, your country, 
and your God; and remember also, that the" day of 
Irish union will be the natal day of Irish liberty. When 
your own Parliament (which I trust in Heaven we may 
yet see again) voted you the right of franchise, and the 
n^^-ht of purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to 



34 SraECH AT CORK. 

yourselves, a certainty of your emancipation. My 
' friends, farewell ! This has been a most unexpected 
meeting to me ; it has been our first— it may be our 
'ast, I can never forget the enthusiasm of this recep- 
tion. I am too much affected by it to make professions; 
but, believe me, no matter where I may be driven by 
the whim of my destiny, you shall find me one, in whom 
change of place shall create no change of principle; 
one whose memory must perish ere he forgets his 
country ; whose heart must be cold when it beats not 
for her happiness. 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT A DINNER, GIVEN ON 

DINAS ISLAND, 

IN TEE LAKE OF KILLARNEY, ON 

MR, PHILLIPS* HEALTH BEING GIVEN, TOGETHER WITH 
THAT OF MR . PAYNE, A YOUNG AMERICAliT. 



It is not with tlie vain hope of returning by words 
the kindnesses which have been Uterally showered on 
me during the short period of our acquaintance, that I 
now interrupt, for a moment, the flow of your festivity 
Indeed, it is not necessary; an Irishman needs no 
requital for his hospitahty ; its generous impulse is the 
instinct of his nature, and the very consciousness of the 
act carries its recompense along with it. But, Sir, there 
are sensations excited by an allusion in your toast^ 
under the influence of which silence would be impos- 
sible. To be associated with Mr. Payne must be, to 
any one who regards private '^virtues and personal 
accomplishments, a source of peculiar pride ; and that 
feeling is uot a little enhanced in me by a recollection 
of the couutry to which we are indepted for his quali- 
fications. Indeed, (^e mention of America has never 
failed to fill me with the most lively emotions. In my 
earliest in^ncy, that tender season when impressions^ 



26 SPEECH 

at once the most permanent and the most powerfiiiy 
are likely to be excited, the story of her then recent 
struggle raised a throb in every heart that loved liberty^ 
and wrung a reluctant tribute even from discomfited 
oppression. I saw her spurning alike the luxuries that 
would enervate, and the legions that would intimidate j 
dashing from her lips the poisoned cup of European 
servitude; and, through all the vicissitudes of her 
protracted conflict, displaying a magnanimity that 
defied misfortune, and a moderation that gave new 
grace to victory. It was the first vision of my childhood; 
it will descend with me to the grave. But if, as a man, I 
venerate the mention of America, what must be my 
feelings towards her as an Irishman. Never, oh never 
while memorv remains, can Ireland forget the home of 
. her emigrant', and the asylum of her exile. No matter 
whether their sorrows sprung from the errors of 
enthusiasm, or the realities of suffering, from fancy or 
infliction ; that must be reserved for the scrutiny of 
those whom the lapse of time shall acquit of partiality. 
It is for the men of other ages to investigate and 
record it ; but surely it is for the men of every age to 
hail the hospitality that received the shelterless, and 
love the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. 
Search creation round, where can you find a country 
that presents so subhme a view, so interesting an 
anticipation.?/ What noble institutions! What a com- 
prehensive policy! What a wise equslization of every 
political advantage! The oppressed of all countries, 
the martyrs of every creed, the innocent victim of 
despotic arrogance or superstitious phrensy, may there 
find refuge J his industry encouraged, his piety re- 



At DINAS tSLAND. 3?^ 

Spected, his ambition animated ; with no restraint but 
those laws which are the same to all, and no distinction 
but thut which his merit may originate. Who can deny 
that the existence of such a country presents a subject 
for human congratulation ! Who can deny, that its^ 
gigantic advancement offers a field for the most rational 
conjecture ! At the end of the very next century, if 
she proceeds as she seems to promise, what a wondrous 
spectacle may she not exhibit ! Who shall say for what 
purpose a mysterious Providence may not have de- 
signed her ! Who shall say that when, in its folUes or 
its crimes, the old world may have interred all the 
pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, 
human nature may not find its destined renovation in 
the new ! For myself, I have no doubt of it. I have 
not the least doubt that when our temples and our 
trophies shall have mouldered into dust — when the 
glories of our name shall be but the legend of tradition, 
and the light of our achievements only live in song; phi- 
losophy will rise again in the sky of her Franklin, and 
glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this 
the vision of romantic fancy ? Is it even improbable? 
Is it half so improbable as the events which for the last 
twenty years have rolled like successive tides over the 
surface of the European world, each erasing the im- 
pressions that preceded it ? Thousands upon thousands. 
Sir, I know there are, who will consider this supposition 
as wild and whimsical; but they have dwelt with little 
reflection upon the records of the past. They have 
but ill observed the never-ceasing progress of national 
rise and national ruin. They form their judgment on 
the deceitful stability of the present hour, never 
D 



33 SPEECH 

considering the innumerable monarchies and republics^, 
in former days, apparently as permanent, their Very 
existence become now the subjects of speculation, I 
had almost said of scepticism. I appeal to History! 
Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can 
all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth 
of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of 
successful heroism, or all the establishments of this 
world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of 
its possessions ? Alas, Troy thought so once ; yet the 
iand of Priam lives only in song ! Thebes thought so 
once, yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her 
very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly 
intended to commemorate! So thought Palmyra — where 
is she ? So thought Perse polis, and now— 

" Yon waste, where roaming lions howl. 
Yon aisle, where moans the grey-eyed owl. 
Shows the proud Persian's great abode, 
Where sceptred once, an earthly god, 
His power-glad arm controlled each happier clime, 
Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars 
sublime." 

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the 
Spartan, yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, 
and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and 
enervate Ottoman ! In his hurried march. Time has 
but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its 
vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their 
ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps ! The 
days of their glory are as if they had never been ; and 



AT DINAS ISLAND. • 39 

the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected 
in the barren ocean now rivals the ubiquity of their 
commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their 
philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the 
inspiration of their bards ! Who shall say, then, con- 
templating the past, that England, proud and potent 
as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is 
and the young America yet soar to be what Athens 
was I Who shall say, when the European column shall 
have mouldered, and the night of barbarism obscured 
its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not 
emerge from the horizon, to rule for its time sovereign 
of the ascendant ! 

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human opera- 
tions, and such the unsubstantial mockery of human 
pride. But I should, perhaps, apologize for this digres- 
sion. The tombs are at best a sad although an instruc- 
tive subject. At all events, they are ill suited to such 
an hour as this. I shall endeavour to atone for it, by 
turning to a theme which tombs cannot inurn or 
revolution alter. It is the custom of your board, and a 
noble one it is, to deck the cup of the gay with the 
garland of the great ; and surely, even in the eyes of 
its deity, his grape is not the less lovely when glowing 
beneath the foliage of the palm-tree and the myrtle. — 
Allow me to add one flower to the chaplet, which, 
though it sprang in America, is no exotic. Virtue 
planted it, and it is naturalized every where. I see 
you anticipate me— I se^ you concur with me, that it 
matters very little whj^t immediate spot may be the 
birth-place of such a man as Washingtoi?^. No people 
can claim, no country can appropiate him ; the boon 



40 SPEECH 

of Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, 
and his residence creation. Though it was the defeat 
of our arms, and the disgrace of our pohcy» 1 almost 
bless the convulsion in which he had his origin. If the 
heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet, when 
the storm passed how pure was the climate that it 
cleared ; how bright in the brow of the firmament 
was the planet which it revealed to us ! In the pro- 
duption of Washington, it does really appear as if 
nature was endeavouring to improve upon herself, 
and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but 
so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. 
Individual instances no donbt there were; splendid 
exemplifications of some single qualification ; Cxsar 
was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was 
patient ; but it was reserved for Washington to blend 
them all in one, and like the lovely chef d^ceuvre of the 
Grecian artist, to exhibit in one glow of associated 
beauty, the pride of every model, and the perfection 
of every master. As a General, he marshalled the 
peasant into a veteran, and supplied by discipline the 
absence of experience ; as a statesman, he enlarged 
the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehensive 
system of general advantage ; and such was the wisdom 
of his views, and the philosophy of his counsels, that 
to the soldier and the statesman he almost added the 
character of the sage ! A conqueror, he was untainted 
with the crime of blood ; a revolutionist, he was free 
from any stain of treason ; for aggression com- 
menced the contest and his country called him to the 
command. — Liberty unsheathecj his sword, necessity 
stained, victory returned it. If he had paused here. 



AT DINAS ISLAND. 41 

Isistory might have doubted what station to assign him, 
whether at the head of her citizens or soldiers, her 
heroes, or her patriots. But the last glorious act 
crowns his career, and banishes all hesitation. Who, 
like Washington, after having elnancipated a hemis- 
phere, resigned its crown and preferred the retirement 
of domestic life to the adoration of a land he might be 
almost said to have created ! 

" How shall we rank thee upon glory's page. 
Thou more than soldier and just less than sage ; 
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee. 
Far less than all fhou hast forborne to be !" 

Such, Sir, is the testimony of one not to be accused 
of partiality in his estimate of America. Happy, proud 
America! the hghtnings of heaven yielded to yonr 
philosophy ! The temptations of earth could not 
seduce your patriotism ! 

I have the honour, Sir, of proposing to you as a 
toast. The immortal memory of George Washiis^gton! 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED 

AN AGGREGATE MEETING 

OF 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 

OF THE COUNTY AND CITY OF DUBLIN. 



HAVING taken, m the discussions on your question, 
such humble share as was allotted to my station and 
capacity, 1 may be permitted to offer my ardent con- 
gratulations at the proud pinnacle on which it this day 
reposes. Afber having combated calumnies the most 
atrocious, sophistries the most plausible, and perils the 
most appalling, that slander could invent, or ingenuity 
devise, or power array against you, I at length behold 
the assembled rank and wealth and talent of the Catho^ 
lie body offering to the legislature that appeal which 
cannot be rejected, if there be a Power in heaven to 
redress injury, or a spirit on earth to administer justice. 
No matter what may be the depreciations of faction or 
of bigotry; this earth never presented a more enno- 
bling spectacle than that of a Christian country suffering 
for her religion with the patience of a martyr, and 
suing for her hberties with the expostulations of a philos- 
opher ; reclaiming the bad by her piety ; refuting the 
bigoted by her practice ; wielding the Apostle's wea- 



AT DUBLIN. 43 

pons in the patriot's cause, and at length, laden with 
chains and with laurels, seeking from the country she 
had saved the Constitution she had shielded ! Little 
did I imagine, that in such a state of your cause, we 
should be called together to counteract the impedi- 
ments to its success, created not by its enemies, but by 
those supposed to be its friends. It is a melancholy 
occasion ; but melancholy as it is, it must be met, and 
met with the fortitude of men struggling in the sacred 
cause of liberty. I do not allude to the proclamation 
of your Board; of that Board I never was a member, 
so I can speak impartially. It contained much talent, 
some learning, many virtues. It was valuable on that 
account ; but it was doubly valuable as being a vehicle 
for the individual sentiments of any Catlrolie, and for 
the aggregate sentiments of every Catholic. Those 
who seceded from it, do not remember that, individ- 
ually, they are nothing; that as a body, they are every 
thing. It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled 
sycophant, whom the bigots dread, or the parliament 
respects ! No, it is the body, the numbers, the rank, 
the property, the genius, the perseverance, the ed- 
ucation, but, above all, the Union of the Catholics. I 
am far from defending every measure of the Board — 
perhaps I condemn some of its measures even more 
than those who have seceded from it; but is it a 
reason, if a general makes one mistake, that his follow- 
ers are to desert him, especially when the contest is 
for all that is dear or valuable .'' No doubt the Board 
had its errors. Show me the human institution which 
has not. Let the man, then, who denounces it, prove 
himself superior to humanity, before he triumphs in 



44 SPEECH 

his accusation. I am sorry for its suppression. When 
I consider the animals who are in office around us, 
the act does not surprise me ; but I confess, even 
from them, the manner did, and the time chosen did, 
most sensibl3\ I did not expect it on the very hour 
when the news of universal peace was first promulgated, 
and oh the anniversary of the only British monarch's 
birth, who ever gave a boon to this distracted country. 
You will excuse this digression, rendered indeed in 
some degree necessary. I shall now confine myself 
exclusively to your resolution, which determines on 
the immediate presentation of your petition, and 
censures the neglect of any discussion on it by your 
advocates during the last session of Parliment. You 
have a right to demand most fully the reasons of any 
man who dissents from Mr. G rattan. I will give you 
mine explicitly. But I shall first state the reasons 
which he has given for the postponement of your 
question. I shall do so out of respect to him, if 
indeed it can be called respect to quote those senti- 
ments, which on their very mention must excite youp 
ridicule. Mr. Grattan presented your petiton, and, on 
moving that it should lie where so many preceding 
ones have lain, namely, on the table, he declared it to , 
be his intention to move for no discussion. Here, in 
the first place; I think Mr. Grattan wrong ; he got 
tiiat petition, if not on the express, at least on the 
implied condition of having it immediately discussed. 
There was not a man at the aggregate meeting at which 
it w^as adopted, who did not expect a discussion on 
the very first opportunity. Mr. Grattan, however, was 
angry at " suggestions." 1 do not think Mr. Grattan, 



AT DUBLIN. 45 

of all men, had any right to be so angry at receiving 
tjiat which every English member <vas willing to 
j^ceive, and was actually receiving from an English 
corn-factor. Mr. G rattan was also angry at our "vio^ 
lence." Neither do I think he had any occasion to be 
so squeamish at what he calls owr viotence. There was a 
day, when Mr. Grattan would not have spurned our 
suggestions, and there was also a day when he was 
fifty-fold more intemperate than any of his oppressed 
countrymen, whom he now holds up to the English 
people as so unconstitutionally violent. A pretty way 
forsooth, for your advocate to commence conciliating 
a foreign auditory in favour of your petition. Mr- 
Grattan, however, has fulfilled his own prophecy, that 
" an oak of the forest is too old to be transplanted at 
fifty," and our fears that an Irish native would soon 
lose its raciness in an English atmosphere. " It is not 
my intention," says he," to move for a discussion at 
present." Why ? " Great obstacles have been removed." 
That's his first reason, " I am, however," says he, 
still ardent " Ardent ! Why it strikes me to be a 
very novel kind of ardour, which toils till it has re- 
moved every impediment, and then pauses at the 
prospect of its victory ! " And I am of opinion," he 
continues, " that an}^ immediate discussion would be 
the height of precipitation :" that is, after having 
removed the impediments, he pauses in his path, 
declaring he is " ardent :" and after centuries of suffer- 
ing, when you press for a discussion, he protests that 
he considers you monstrously precipitate ! Now is not 
that a fair translation ? Why really if we did not know 
Mr. Grattan, we shouh^ be almost tempted to think 



46 SPEECH- 

that he was quoting from the ministry. With the 
exception of one or two plain, downright, sturdy, 
unblushing bigots, vyho opposed you because you were 
Christians, and declared they did so, this was the cant 
of every man who affected liberality. " Oh, I declare," 
they say, " they may not be cannibals, though they are 
Catholics, and T would be very glad to vole for them, 
but this is no r/mc,'^ "Oh no,*' says Bragge Bathurst, 
"it's no time. What! in time of war! Why it looks 
like bullying us !" Very well ; next comes the peace, 
and what say our friends the opposition ? " Oh ! I 
declare peace is no ^ime, it looks so like persuading 
us." For my part, serious as the subject is, it affects 
me with the very same ridicule with which I see I have 
so unconciously affected you. I will tell you a story of 
which it reminds me. It is told of the celebrated 
Charles Fox. Far be it from me, however, to mention 
that name with levity. As he was a great man, I revere 
him ; as he was a good man, I love him. He had as 
wise a head as ever paused to deliberate ; he had as 
sweet a tongue as ever gave the words of wisdom 
utterance ; and he had a heart so stamped with the 
immediate impress of the Divinity, that its very errors 
might be traced to the excess of its benevolence. I 
had almost forgot the story. Fox was a man of genius 
-^of course he was poor. Poverty is a reproach to 
no man ; to such a man as Fox, I think it was a pride ; 
for if /^e chose to traflic with his principles ; if Ae chose 
to gamble with his conscience, how easily might he 
have been rich ? I guessed your answer. It would be 
hard, indeed, if you did not believe that in England 
talents might find a purchaser, who have seen in 



AT DUBLIN. 47 

Ireland how easily ^a blockhead may swindle himself 
into preferment. Juvenal says that the greatest mis- 
fortune attendant upon poverty is ridicule. Fox found 
out a greater — debt. The Jews called on him for 
payment. " Ah, my dear friends," says Fox, " I 
admit the principle ; I owe you money, but what 
time is this, when I am going upon business.''* Just so 
our friends admit the principle ; they owe you ernan- 
cipation, but war's no time. Well, the Jews departed 
just as you did. They returned to the charge : "What: 
(cries Fox,) is this a time, when I am engaged on an 
appointment?" What! say our friends, is this a time 
when all the world's at peace. The Jews departed; 
but the end of it was. Fox, with his secretary, Mr. 
Hare, who was as much in debt as he was, shut them- 
selves up in garrison. The Jews used to surround his 
liabitation at day light, and poor Fox regularly put 
his head out of the window, with this question. "Gen- 
tlemen, are you jPo^-hunting or ^are-hunting this 
morning?" His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews. 
" Well, well. Fox, now you have always admitted the 
principle, but protested against the f/me-^we will give 
you your own time, only just fix some final day for our 
repayment." — "Ah, my dear Moses," replies Fox, "now 
this is friendly. I will take you at your word; I will fix a 
day,'and as it's to be Sijinaldixy, what would you think of 
the day of judgment?" — That will be too busy a day with 
us." — "Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, 
let us settle the day after." Thus it is, between the war 
inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst, and the peace 
inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may eipect your 
emancipation bill pretty much about the time that 



4S SPEECH 

Fox settled for the payment of his creditors^ Mr. 
G rattan, however, though he scorned to take youf 
suggestionSj took the suggestions of yowT friends. ** I 
have consulted,'* says he, **my right honourable 
friends !" Oh, all friendly all right honourable / Now 
this it is to trust the interest of a people into the 
hands of a party. You must know, in parliamentary 
parlance, these right honourable friends mean a party* 
There are few men so contemptible, as not to hare a 
party. The minister has his party. The opposition have 
have their party. ThQ saints, fov there are Saints in the 
House of Commons, lucus a non lucendo, the saints have 
their party. Every one has his party. I had forgotten—* 
Ireland has no party. Such are the reasons, if reasons they 
can be called, which Mr. Grattan has given for the post- 
ponement of your question; and I sincerely say, if they, 
had come from any other man, I would not have conde-i 
scendedto have given them an answer. He is indeed re- 
ported to have said that he had others in reserve, which 
he did not think it necessary to detail. If those which he 
reserved were like those which he delivered, I da 
not dispute the prudence of keeping them to himself ; 
but as we have not the gift of prophecy, it is not easy 
for us to answer them, until he shall deign to give 
them to his constituents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged reasons 
for the postponement, it is quite natural that you 
should require what my reasons are for urging the 
discussion. I shall give them candidly. They are at 
once so simple and explicit, it is quite .impossible that 
the meanest capacity amongst you should not com- 
prehend them. I would urge the instant discussion, 
because discussion lias always been of use to you ; 



AT DUBLIX. 45 

because, upon Q\evy discussion you hav^ gained con- 
verts out of doors ; -and because, upon every discussion 
within tiie doors of parliament, your enemies have 
diminished, and your fiiends have increased. Now, is 
not that a strong reason for continuing your discussions? 
This may be assertion. Aye, but I will prove it. In 
order to convince you of the argument as referring to 
the country, I need but point to the state of the public 
mind now upon ;the subject, and that which e'xisted 
in the memory of the youngest. I myself remember 
the blackest and the basest universal denunciations 
against your creed, and the vilest anathemas against 
any man who would grant you an ioto. Noiv^ every 
man affects to be liberal, and the only question with 
some is the ti7ne of the concessions; witli others, the 
extent of the concessions; with many, the nature of 
the securities you shoidd afford ; whilst a great multi- 
tude, in which I am proud to class myself, think that 
your emancipation should be immediate, universal, and 
unrestricted. Sucli has been the progress of the 
human mind out of doors, in consequence of liie povv'- 
erful, eloquence, argument, and policy elicited by 
those discussions which your friends now have, for 
the first time, found out to be precipitate. Now let us 
see what has been the effect produced luithin the doors 
of Parliament. For twenty years you were silent, and 
of course you were neglected. The consequence was 
most natural. Why shoul<l Parliament grant privileges 
to men who did not think those privileges worth 
the solicitation } Then rose your agitators, as they 
are called by those bigots who are trembling at 
the elFect of their arguments on the community, and 
E 



50 SPEECH 

who, as a matter of course, take every opportunity of 
cakimniating them. Ever since that period your cause 
has been advancing. Take the numerical proportions 
in the house of Commons on each subsequent discus- 
sion. In 1805, the first time it was brought forward in 
the Imperial legislature, and it was then aided by the 
powerful eloquence of Fox, there was a majority 
against even taking your claims into consideration, of 
no less a number than 212. It was an appalling omen. 
In 1808,1iowever, on the next discussion, that majority 
Wi^s diminished to 163. In 1810 it decreased to 104. 
In 1811 it dwindled to 64, and at length in 1812, on 
the motion of Mr. Canning, and it is not a little re- 
markable that the first successful Exertion in your 
favour was made by an English member, your enemies 
fled the field, and you had the triumphant majority to 
support you of 129 ! Now, is this not demonstration? 
What becomes now of those who say discussion has 
not been of use to you ; But I need not have resorted 
to arithmetical calculation. IMen become ashamed of 
combating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must 
prevail; it forces its way with the fire and the pre- 
cision of the morning sun-beam. Vapours may impede 
the infancy of its progress; but the very resistance that 
would check only condenses and concentrates it, until 
at length it goes forth in the fulness of its meridian, all 
life and sight and lustre, the minutest objects visible in 
its refulgence. You lived for centuries on the vegetable 
diet and eloquent silence of this Pythagorean policy; 
and the consequence was, when you thought your- 
selves mightily dignified, and mightily interesting, 
the whole world was laughing at your philosophy, and 
sending its aliens to take possession of your birth-right. 



AT DUBLIN. 51 

i have given you a g'ood reason for urging your dis- 
cussion, by having shown you that discussion has always 
gained you proselytes. But is it the time? says Mr. 
Grattan. Yes, Sir, it is the ?/m-e, pecuHarly the time,- 
iinless indeed the great question of Irish liberty is to be 
reserved as a weapon in the hands of a party to wield 
against the weakness of the British minister. But why 
should I delude you by talking; about time! Oh! there 
will never be a time with Bigotry! She has no head, 
and cannot think; she has no heart, and cannot feel; 
when she moves, it is in wrath; when she pauses, it is 
amid ruin; her prayers are curses, her communion is 
death, her vengeance is eternity, her decalogue is 
written in the blood of her victims ; and if she stoops 
for a moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some 
kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for keener 
rapine, and replume her wing for a more sanguinary 
desolation! I appeal from this infernal, grave-stalled 
fury, I appeal to the good sense, to the policy, to the 
gratitude of England; and I make my appeal peculiarly 
at this moment, when ail the illustrious potentates of 
Europe are assembled together in the British capital, 
to hold the great festival of universal peace and uni- 
versal emancipation. Perhaps when France, flushed 
with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated by 
enmity; her avowed aim an universal conquest, her 
means the confederated resources of the Continent, 
her guide the greatest military genius a nation fertile 
in prodigies has produced — a man who seemed born 
to invest what had been regular, to defile what had 
been venerable, to crush what had been established, 
and to create, as if by a magic impulse, a fairy world, 
peopled by the paupers he had commanded into kings^ 



52 SPEECH 

and based by the thrones he had crumbled in his 
caprices — perhaps when such a power, so led, so or- 
ganised, and so incited, was in its noon of triumph, the 
timid might tremble even at the charge that would 
save, or the concession that would strengthen.-— But 
now, — her allies faithless, her conquests despoiled, her 
territory dismembered, her legions defeated, her 
leader dethroned, and her reigning prince -our ally by 
treaty, our debtor by gratitude, and our alienable friend 
by every solemn obligation of civilized society, — the 
objection is our strength, and the obstacle our battle- 
ment. Perhaps when the Pope was in the power of 
our enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry might 
have rested on it. The inference was false as to Ireland, 
and it was ungenerou§| as to Rome. The Irish Catholic, 
firm in his faith, bows to the Pontiff's spiritual supre- 
macy, but he would spurn the Pontiff^'s temporal in- 
terference. If, with the spirit of an earthly domination, 
he were to issue to-morrow his despotic mandate, 
Cathie Ireland with one voice would answeif him ; 
** Sire, we bow with reverence to your spiritual mission: 
the descendant of Saint Peter, we freely acknowledge 
you the head of our church, and the organ of our creed: 
but, Sire, if we have a church, we cannot forget that we 
also have a country; and when you attempt to convert 
your mitre into a crown^ and your crozier into a 
sceptre, you degrade the majesty of your high dele- 
gation, and grossly miscalculate upon our acquiescence. 
No foreign power shall regulate the allegiance which 
we owe to our sovereign; it was the fault of our fathers 
that one Pope forged our fetters ; it will be our own, 
IS we allow them to be riveted by another." Such 



AT DUBLIN. 53> 

would be the answer of universal Ireland; such was 
heF answer to the audacious menial, who dared to dic- 
tate her unconditional submission to an act of Parlia- 
ment which emancipated by penalties, and redressed 
by insult. But, Sir, it never would have entered into 
the contemplation of the Pope to have assumed such 
an authority. His character was a sufficient shield 
against the imputation, and his policy must have taught 
him, that, in grasping at the shadow of a temporal 
power, he should but risk the reality of his ecclesi- 
astical supremacy. Thus was Parliament doubly 
guarded against a foreign usurpation. The people upon 
whom it was to act deprecate its authority, and the 
power to which it was imputed abhors its ambition ; 
the Pope would not exert it if he could, and the people 
would not obey it if he did. Just precisely upon the 
SLime foundation rested the aspersions which were cast 
xipon your creed. How did experience justify them? 
Did Lord Wellington find that religious faith made any 
difference amid the thunder of the battle ? Did the 
Spanish soldier desert his colours because his General 
believed not in the real presence P Did the brave Por- 
tuguese neglect his orders tonegociate about mysteries? 
Or w^hat comparison did the hero draw between the 
policy of England and the piety of Spain, when at one 
moment he led the heterodox legions to victory, and 
the very next was obliged to fly from his own native 
flag, waving defiance on the walls of Borgos, where the 
Irish exile planted and sustained it ? What must he 
hare felt when in a foreign land he was obliged to 
command brother against brother, to raise the sword 
of blood, and drown tlie cries of nature with the artillery 
E2 



M SPEECH 

of death ? What were the sensations of our liapless 
exiles, when they recognized the features of thei? 
long-lost country? when they heard the accents of the 
tongue they loved, or caught the cadence of the 
simple melody which once lulled them to sleep within 
a mother's arms, and cheered the darling circle they 
must behold no more I Alas, how the poor banished 
heart delights in the memory that song associates! He 
h(iard it in happier days, when the parents he adored, 
the maid he loved, the friends of his soul, and the green 
fields of his infancy were round hini; when his labours 
were illumined with the sun-shine of the heart, and his 
humble hut was a palace— for it was home. His soul is 
full, his eye suffused, he bends from the battlements to 
catch the cadence, when his death-shot, sped by a 
brother's hand, lays him in his gravQ.-— the victim of a 
code calling itself Christiani Who shall say, heart- 
rending as it is, this picture is from fancy? Has it not 
occurred in Spain? May it not, at this instant, be acting 
in America? Is there any country in the universe in 
which these brave exiles of a barbarous bjgotry are not 
to be found refuting the calumnies that banished and 
rewarding the hospitality that received them? Yet 
England, enlightened England, who sees them in every 
field of the old world and the ne^v, defending the 
various flags of every faith, supports the injustice of 
her exclusive constitution, by branding upon them the 
ungenerous accusation of an exclusive creed! England, 
the ally of Catholic Portugal, the ally of Catholic Spain, 
the ally of Cathohc France, the Friend of the Pope ! 
England, who seated a Catholic bigot in Madrid ! who 
convoyed a CathoUc Braganza to the Brazils! who en- 



AT DUBLIN, 55 

throned a Catholic Bourbon in Paris ! who guaranteed 
a Catholic establishment in Canada! who gave a con- 
stitution to Catholic Hanover I England, who searches 
the globe for Catholic grievances to redress, and 
Catholic Princes to restore, will not trust the Catholic 
at home, who spends his blood and treasure in her 
service ! ! Is this generous? Is this consistent? Is it just? 
Is it even polite ? Is it the act of a wise country to 
fetter the energies of an entire population ? Is it the 
act of a Christian country to do it in the name of God? 
Is it politic in a governn^ent to degrade part of the 
body by which it is supported, or pious to make Pro- 
TiDExeE a party to their degradation? There are socie- 
ties in England for discountenancing vice; there are 
Christian associations for distributing the Bible; there 
are voluntary missions for converting the heathen: but 
Ireland the seat of their government, the stay of their 
empire, their associate by all the ties of nature and of 
interest; how she has benefited by the Gospel of which 
they boast? Has the sweet spirit of Christianity ap- 
peared on our plains in the character of her precepts, 
breathing the air and robed in the beauties of the 
world to which she wouid lead us; with no argument 
but love, no look but peace, no wealth but piety ; her 
creed comprehensive as the arch of heaven, and her 
charities bounded but by the circle of creation ? Or, 
has she been let loose amongst us, in form of fury, and 
in act of demon, her heart festered with the fires of 
hell, her hands clotted with the gore of earth, withering 
alike in her repose and in her progress, her path ap- 
parent by the print of blood, and her pause denoted 
by the expanse of desolation ? Gospel of Heaven ! is 



56 SPEECH 

Ibis thy herald? God of the universe! is this thy hajid- 
rnaid ? Christian of the ascendancy! liow would you 
answer the disbelieving infidel, if he asked you, should 
he estimate the Christian doctrine by the Christian 
practice; if he dwelt upon those periods when the 
humiin victim writhed upon the altar of the peaceful 
Jesus, and the cross, crimsoned with his blood became 
little better than a stake to tlie sacrifice of his votaries; 
if he pointed to Ireland, where the word of peace was 
the war-whoop of destruction ; where the son was 
bribed against the fatlier, and the plunder of the pa- 
rent's property was made a bounty on the recantation 
of the parent's creed; where the march of the human 
mind was stayed in liis name who had inspired it with 
reason, and any effort to liberate a fellow-creature from 
his intellectual bondage was sure to be recompensed 
by the dungeon or the scaffold; where ignorance was so 
long a legislative command, and piety a legislative 
crime; where religion was placed as a barrier be- 
tween the sexes, and the intercourse of nature was 
pronounced felony by law ; where God's worship 
was an act of stealth, and his ministers sought amongst 
the savages of the woods that sanctuary which a 
nominal civihzation had denied them; where at this 
instant conscience is made to blast every hope of genius, 
and every energy of ambition, and the Catholic who 
w^ould rise to any station of trust, must in the face of 
bis country, deny the f^ith of his fathers ; where the 
preferments of earth are only to be obtained by the 
forfeiture of Heaven? 

" Unprized are her sons till they learn to betray, 
Undistinguish'd they live if they shame not their 
sires; 



AT DUBLIN. ^7 

And the torch that would light them to dignity's way, 
Must be caught from the pile where their country 



Tiow, let me ask, how would the Christian zealot droop 
beneath this catalogue of Christian qualifications? Bui, 
thus it is, when sectarians differ on account of mysteries; 
in the heat and acrimony of tlie causeless contest, re- 
ligion, the glory of one world, and the guide of another, 
drifts from the splendid circle in which she shone, in 
the comet-maze of uncertainty and, error. The code, 
against which you petition, i6 a vile compound of im- 
piety and impoHcy: impiety, because it debases in tlie 
iiame of God; impolicy, because it disqualifies under 
pretence of government. If we^are to argue from the 
services of Protestant Ireland, to the losses sustained by 
the bondage of Catholic Ireland, and I do not see why 
we should not, the state which continues such a system 
is guilty of littla less than a political suicide. It matters 
little where the Protestant Irishman has been em- 
ployed; whether with Burke wielding the senate with 
his eloquence, with Castlereagh guiding the cabinet 
by his counsels, with Barry enriching the arts by his 
pencil, with Swift adorning literature by his genius, 
with Goldsmith or with Moore softening the heart by 
their melody, or with Wellington chaining victory at 
his car, he may boldly challenge the competition of 
the vvorld. Oppressed and impoverished as our country 
is, every muse has cheered, and every art adorned, and 
every conquest crowned her. Plundered, she was not 
poor, for her character enriclied; attainted, she was 
not titleless,. for her services ennobled; literally out- 



58 SPEECH 

lawed into eminence and fettered into fame, the fields 
of her exile were immortalized by her deeds, and the 
links of her chain became decorated by her laurels. 
Is this fancy, or is it fact? Is there a department in the 
state in which Irish genius does not possess a pre- 
dominance ? Is there a conquest which it does not 
achieve, or a dignity which it does not adorn? At this 
instant, is there a country in the world to which 
England has not deputed an Irishman as her repre- 
sentative ? Slie has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir Gore 
Ouseley to Ispahan, Lord Stuart to Vienna, Lord Cas- 
tlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wellesley to Madrid, 
Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the Brazils, 
Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wellington to Paris — 
all Irishmen ! Whether it results from accident or 
from merit, can there be a more cutting sarcasm oa 
the policy of England! Is it not directly saying to her, 
•* here is a country from one fifth of whose people you 
depute the agents of your most august delegation, 
the remaining four-fifths of which by your odious 
bigotry, you incapaciate from any station of office or 
of trust!" It is adding all that is weak in impolicy to all 
that is wicked in ingratitude. What is her apology ? 
Will she pretend that the Deity imitates her injustice, 
and incapacitates the intellect as she has done the 
creed ? After making Providence a pretence for her 
code, will she also make it a party to her crime, and 
arraign the universal spirit of partiality in his dispensa- 
tion? Is she not content with Him as a Protestant God, 
unless He also consents to become a Catholic demon? 
But, if the charge were true, if the Irish Catholic were 
;nibruted and debased, Ireland's conviction would be 



AT DUBLIN. 69 

England's crime, and your answer to the bigot's charge 
should be the bigot^s conduct. What, then! is this the 
resuh of six centuries of your governnnent? Is this the 
connection which you called a benefit to Ireland? Have 
your protectujg laws so debased them, that the very 
privilege of reason is worthless in their possession? 
Shame! ob, shame! to the government where the peo- 
p\e are barbarous ? The day is not distant when tliey 
made the education of a Catholic a crime, and yet they 
arraign the Catholic for ignorance! The day is not 
distant when they proclaimed the celebration of the 
Catholic worship a felony, and yet they proclaim that 
the Catholic is not moral! What folly ! Is it to be ex- 
pected that the people are to emerge in a moment 
from the stupor of a protracted degradation? There 
is not perhaps to be traced upon the map of national 
misfortune a spot so truly and so tediously deplorable 
as Ireland. Other lands, no doubt, have had their 
calamities. To the horrors of revolution, the miseries 
of despotism, the scourges of anarchy, they have ia 
their turns been subject. But it has been only in their 
turns ; the visitations of wo, though severe, have not 
been eternal; the hour of probation, or of punishment^ 
has passed away; and the tempest, after having emptied 
the viai of its wrath, has given place to the serenity of 
the calm and of the sunshine. — Has this been the case 
with respect to our miserable country ? Is there, save 
in the visionary world of tradition — is there in the 
.progress, either of record or recollection, one verdant 
spot in the desert of our annals where patriotism can 
find repose, or philanthropy refreshment ? Oh, indeed^, 
posterity will pause with wonder on the melancholy 



60 SPEECH 

page which shall pourtray Ihe story of a people 
amongst whom the policy of man has waged an eternal, 
warfare with the providence of God, blighting into 
deformity all that was beaulious, and into famine all ' 
that was abundant. I repeat, however, the charge to 
be false. The Catholic mind in Ireland has made ad- 
vances scarcely to be hoped in the short interval of 
its partial emancipation. Bwt what encouragement has 
the Catholic parent to educate his offspring ? Suppose 
he sends his son, the hope of his pride and the wealth 
of his heart, into the army; the child justifies his 
parental anticipation ; he is moral in his habits, he is 
strict in his discipline, he is daring in the field, and 
temperate at the board, and patient in the camp; the 
first in the charge, and the last in the retrcatj with a 
hand to achieve, and a head to guide, and temper to 
, conciliate; he combines the skill of Wellington with 
the clemency of Caesar and the courage of Turenne 
— yet he can never rise — he is a Catholic/ — Take 
another instance. Suppose him at the bar. He has 
spent his nights at the lamp, and his days in the forum; 
the rose has withered from his cheek mid the drudgery 
of form ; the spirit has fainted in his heart mid the 
analysis of crime; he has foregone the pleasures of his 
youth, and the associate's of his heart, and all the fairy 
enchantments in which fancy may have wrapped him i 
Alas ! for what? Though genius flashed from his eye, 
and eloquence rolled from his lips: though he spoke 
with the tongue of Tully, and argued with the learning, 
of Coke, and thought with the purity of Fletcher, he 
can never rise — he is a Catholic/ Merciful God! what 
a state of society is this, in which thy worship is inter- 



AT DUBLIN. 61 

ffoscd as a disqualification upon thy providence! Be- 
hold, in a word, the effects of the code against which 
you petition; it disheartens exertion, it disqualifies 
merit, it debilitates the state, it degrades the Godhead, 
it disobeys Christianity, it makes religion an article of 
traffic, and its founder a monopoly; and for ages it has 
reduced a country, blessed with every beauty of nature 
and every bounty of Providence, to a state unparalleled 
under any constitutioiT professing to be free, or any 
government pretending to be civilized. To justify this 
enormity, there is now no argument. Now is the time 
to concede with dignity that which was never denied 
without injustice. Who can tell how soon we may re- 
quire all the zeal of our united population to secure 
our very existence ? Who can argue upon the con- 
tinuance of this calm? Have we not seen the labour of 
ages overthrown, and the whim of a day erected on its 
ruins; establishments-lhe nriost solid withering at a 
word, and visions the most whimsical realized as a wisli; 
crowns crumbled, discords confederated, kings become 
vagabonds, and vagabonds made kings at the capricious 
phrenzy of a village adventurer? Have we not seen the 
whole political and moral world shaking as with an 
earthquake, and shapes tlie most fantastic and formida- 
ble and frightful heaved into life by the quiverings of 
the convulsion? The storm has passed over us; England 
has survived it; if she is wise, her present prosperity 
will be but the handmaid to her justice; if she is pious, 
the peril she has escaped will be but the herald of her 
expiation. Thus much have I said in the way of argu- 
1 ment to the enemies of your question. Let me offer a 
4 humble opinion to its friends. The first and almost the 



6S SPEECH 

sole request which an advocate would make to you is, 
to remain united; rely on it, a divided assault can never 
overcome a consolidated resistance. I allow that an 
educated aristocracy are as ahead to the people, with- 
out which they cannot think; but then the people are 
as hands to the aristocracy, without which it cannot 
act. Concede, then, a little to even each other's pre- 
judices; recollect that individual sacrifice is universal 
strength; and can there be a nobler altar than the altar 
of your country? This same spirit of conciliation should 
be extended even to your enemies. If England will not 
consider that a brow of suspicion is but a bad accom- 
paniment to an act of grace; if she will not allow that 
kindness may make those friends whom even oppression 
could not make foes ; if she will not confess that the 
best security she can have from Ireland is by giving 
Ireland an interest in her constitution; still, since her 
power is the shield of her prejudices, you should con- 
cede where you cannot coi>quer; it is wisdom to yield 
when it has become hopeless to combat. 

There is but one concession which I would never 
advise, and which, were I a Catholiq, I would never 
make. You will perceive that I allude to any inter- 
ference with your clergy. That was the crime of Mr, 
Grattan's security bill. It made the patronage of your 
religion the ransom for your liberties, and bought the 
favour of the crown by the surrender of the church. 
It is a vicious principle, it is the cause of all your sor- 
rows. If there had not been a state establishment, there 
would not have been a Catholic bondage. By that in- 
cestuous conspiracy between the altar and the throne^ 
infidelity has achieved a more extended dominion thaw 



AT DUBLiy. 6.S 

by all the sophisms of her philosophy, or all the terrors 
of her persecution. It makes God's apostle a court- 
appendage, and God himself a court-purveyor; it carves 
the cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on 
his brow, and gold in his han^, the little perishable 
puppet of this world's vanity makes Omnipotence a 
menial to its power, and Eternity a pander to its profits. 
Be not a party to it. As you have spurned the tempo- 
ral interference of the Pope, resist the spiritual juris- 
diction of the crown. As I do not think that you, on 
the one hand, could surrender the patronage of your 
religion to the King, without the most unconscientious 
compromise, so, on the other hand, I do not think the 
Iving could ever conscientiously receive it. Suppose he 
receives it; if he exercises it for the advantage of your 
church, he directly violates the coronation-oath which 
binds him to the exclusive interests of the Church of 
England ; and if he does not intend to exercise it for 
your advantage, to what purpose does he require from 
you its surrender? But what pretence has England for 
this interference with your religion? It was the religion 
of her most glorious era, it was the religion of her 
most ennobled patriots, it was the religion of the 
wisdom that framed her constitution, it was the religion 
of the valour that achieved it, it would have been to 
this day the religion of her empire had it not been for 
the lawless lust of a murderous adulterer. What right 
has she to suspect your church? When her thousand 
sects were brandishing the fragments of their faith 
against each other, and Christ saw his garment, without 
a seam, a piece of patchwork for every mountebank 
who figured in the pantomine; wheu her Babel temple 



<54 SPEECH 

rocked at every breath of her Priestleys wid her 
Paynes, Ireland, proof against the menace of her power, 
was proof also against the perilous impiety of her ex- 
ample. But if as Catholics you should guard it, the 
palladium of your creed, not less as Irishmen should 
you prize it, the relic of your country. Deluge after 
deluge has desolated her provinces. The monuments 
of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader fell 
beneath the still more savage civilization of another. 
Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood like some 
majestic monument amid the desert of antiquity, just in 
its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the 
virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs^ 
pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venera- 
ble hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the 
ruins by which it was surrounded. Oh I do not for any 
temporal boon betray the great principles which are 
to purchase you an eternity ! Here, from your very 
sanctuary,— here, with my hand on the endangered 
altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the 
freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling; 
I conjure you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred 
ark of your rehgion; preserve it inviolate; its light is 
^^ light from heaven;" follow it through all the perils of 
your journey ; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive 
Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, and 
guide to the land of your liberation! 



PETITION 

REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH, 
DBAWJ^BY MR. PHILLIPS, 

AT THE KEaXJEST OP 

THE ROMAN' CATHOLICS OF IRELAND. 



To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingclo')n 
of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled: 

The humble Petition of the Roman Cathohcs of Ireland, 
whose names are undersigned, on behalf of them- 
selves, and others, professing the Roman Catholic 
Religion, 

SHEWETH, 

That we, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, 
again approach the legislature with a statement of the 
grievances under which we labour, and of which we 
most respectfully, but at the same time most firmly, 
solicit the effectual redress. Our wrongs are so notori- 
ous, and so numerous, that their minute detail is quite 
unnecessary, and would indeed be impossible, were it 
deemed expedient. Ages of persecution on the one 
hand, and of patience on the other, sufficiently attest 
our sufferings and our submission. Privations have 
been answered only by petition, indignities by re- 
monstrance, injuries by forgiveness. It has been a 
F3 



66 PETITION 

misfortune to have suffered for the sake of our religion; 
but it has also been a pride to have borne the best 
testimony to the purity of our doctrine, by the meek- 
ness of our endurance. 

We have sustained the power which spurned us; we 
have nerved the arm which smote us; we have lavished 
our strength, oUr talent, and our treasures, and buoyed 
up, on the prodigal effusion of our young blood, the 
triumphant Ark of British Liberty. 

We approach, then, with confidence, an enlightened 
legislature ; in the name of Nature, we ask our rights 
as men; in the name of the Constitution, we ask onr 
privileges as subjects; in the name of God, we ask the 
sacred protectionofunpersecuted piety as Christians. 

Are securities required of us ? We offer them — the 
best securities a throne can have — the affections of a 
people. We offer faith that was never violated, hearts ' 
that \yere never corrupted, valour that never crouched. 
Every hour of peril has proved our allegiance, and 
every field of Europe exhibits its example. 

We abjure all temporal authority, except that of our 
Sovereign; we acknowledge no civil pre-eminence, 
save that of our constitution ; and, for our lavish and 
voluntary expenditure, we only ask a reciprocity of 
benefits. 

Separating, as we do, our civil rights from our 
spiritual duties, we humbly desire that they may not 
be confounded. We ** render unto Cxsar the things 
that are Caesar's," but we must also " render unto God 
the things that are God's." Our church could not^ 
descend to claim a state-authority, nor do we ask for it 
a state aggrandisement: its hopes, its powers, and its 



PETITION. €7 

pretensions, are of another world; and, when we raise 
our hands most humbly to the State, our prayer is 
not, that the fetters may be transferred to the hands 
which are raised for us to Heaven. We would not 
erect a splendid shrine even to Liberty on the ruins of 
the Temple. 

In behalf, then, of five millions of a brave and loyal 
people, we call upon the legislature to annihilate the . 
odious bondage which bows down the mental, physical, 
and moral energies of Ireland; and, in the name of 
that Gospel which breathes charity towards all, we 
seek freedom of conscience for all the inhabitants of 
the British empire. 

May it therefore please this honourable House to 

aboHsh all penal and disabling laws, which in any 

manner infringe religious liberty, or restrict the free 

enjoyment of the sacred rights of conscience, withia 

hese realms. 

And your petioners will ever pray. 



THE ADDRESS 

TO 

H. R. H. THE PRINCESS OF V/ALESr 

BRAWN BY MR, PHILLIPS 

AT THE REaUEST OF 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELA^Jti^ 



May it please Your Royal Highness, 

We, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, beg 
leave to offer our unfeigned congratulations on your 
providential escape from the conspiracy which so lately 
endangered both your life and honour — a conspiracy, 
unmanly in its motives, unnatural in its object, and un- 
worthy in its means — a conspiracy combining so 
monstrous an union of turpitude and treason, that it is 
difficult to say, whether royalty would have suffered 
more from its success, than human nature has from its 
conception. Our allegiance is not less shocked at the 
infernal spirit, which would sully the diadem, by 
breathing on its most precious ornament, the virtue of 
its wearer, than our best feelings are at the in- 
hospitable baseness, which would betray the innocence 
of a female in a land of strangers ! ! 

Deem it not disrespectful, illustrious Lady, that from 






ADDRESS. 69 

^ people proverbially ardent in the cause of the de- 
fenceless, the shout of virtuous congratulation should 
receive a feeble echo. Our harp has long been unused 
to tones of gladness, and our hills but faintly answer 
the unusual accent. Your heart, however, can appre- 
ciate the silence inflicted by suffering; and ours, alas, 
feels but too acutely that the commisseration is sincere 
which flows from sympathy. 

Let us hope that, when congratulating virtue in your 
royal person, on her signal triumph over the perjured, 
the profligate, and the corrupt, we may also rejoice in 
the completion of its consequences. Let us hope that the 
society of your only child again solaces your dignified 
retirement; and that, to the misfortune of being a 
widowed wife, is not added to the pang of being a 
childless mother ! 

But, if Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled; if, in- 
deed the cry of an indignant and unanimous people is 
disregarded; console yourself with the reflection, that, 
though your exiled daughter may not hear the pre- 
cepts of virtue from your lips, she may at least study 
the practice of it in your example^ 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED BY MR. PHILLIPS 

AT A PUBLIC DINXER GIVEN TO HIM BY THE 

FRIEJ^DS OF CIVIL AJVD RELIGIOUS 
LIBERTY 

IN LIVERPOOL. 



Believe me Mr. Chairman, I feel too sensibly the 
high and unmerited compliment you have paid me, to 
attempt any other return than the simple expression of 
my graVitude; to be just, 1 must be silent; but though 
the tongue is mute, my heart is much more than elo- 
quent. The kindness of friendship, the testimony of 
any class, however humble, carries with it no trifling 
gratification ; but stranger as I am, to be so dis- 
tinguished in this great city, whose wealth is its least 
commendation; the emporium of commerce, liberality, 
and public spirit; the birth-place of talent; the residency 
of integrity ; the field where freedom seems to have 
rallied the last allies of her pause, as if with the noble 
consciousness that, though patriotism could not wreath 
the laurel round her brow, genius should at least raise 
it over her ashes; to be so distinguished, Sir, and in 
such a place, does, I confess, inspire me with a vanity 
which even a sense of my unimportance cannot eu- 



i SPEECH n 

.itely silence. Indeed, Sir, the ministerial critics of 
Liverpool were right. I have no claim to this enthusi- 
astic welcome. But I cannot look upon this testimonial 
So much as a tribute to myself, as an omen to that 
country with whose fortunes the dearest sympathies of 
my soul are intertwined. Oh yes, I do foresee when she 
shall hear with what courtesy her most pretentionless 
advocate has been treated, how the same wind that 
wafts her the intelligence, will revive that flame within 
I her, which the blood of ages has not been able to ex- 
tinguish. It may be a delusive hope, but I am glad to 
grasp at any phantom that flits across the solitude of 
that country's desolation. On this subject you can 
scarcely be ignorant, for you have an Irishman resident 
amongst you, whom I am proud to call my friend; 
whose fidelity to Ireland no absence can diminish; who 
has at once the honesty to be candid, and the talent to 
be convincing. I need scarcely say I allude to Mr. 
Casey. I knew. Sir, the statue was too striking to re- 
quire a name upon the pedestal.— Alas, Ireland has 
little now to console her, except the consciousness of 
having produced such men.— It would be a reasonable 
adulation in me to deceive you. Six centuries of base 
misgovernment, of causeless, ruthless, and ungrateful 
persecution, have now reduced that country to a crisis, 
at which I know not whether the friend of humanity 
has most cause to grieve or rejoice ; because I am not 
sure that the feehng which prompts the tear at human 
sufferings, ought not to triumph in that increased in^ 
flictions which may at length tire them out of en- 
durance. I trust in God a change of system may in 
time anticipate the result* ©f desperation; but you may 



72 SPEECH 

quite depend on it, a period is approaching, when, if 
penalty does not pause in the pursuit, patience will 
turn short on the pursuer. Can you wonder at it! Con- 
template Ireland during any given period of England's 
rule, and what a picture does she exhibit! Behold her 
created in all the prodigality of nature; with a soil that 
anticipates the husbandman's desire; with harbours 
courting the commerce of the world; with rivers 
capable of the most effective navigation ; with the ore 
of every metal struggling through her surface; with a 
people, brave, generous, and intellectual, literally 
forcing their way through the disabilities of their own 
country into the highest stations of every other, and 
well rewarding the policy that promotes them, by 
achievements the most heroic, and allegiance without 
a blemish. How have the successive governments of 
England demeaned themselves to a nation, offering 
such an accumulation of moral and political advantages! 
See it in the state of Ireland at this instant; in the uni- 
versal bankruptcy that overwhelms her ; in the loss of 
her trade; in the annihilation of her manufactures; in 
the deluge of her debt; in the divisions of her people; 
in all the loathsome operations of an odious, monopo- 
lyzing, hypocritical fanaticism on the one hand, 
wrestling with the untired but natural reprisals of an 
irritated population on the other! it required no com- 
mon ingenuity to reduce such a country to such a 
situation. But it has been done; man has conquered the 
beneficence of the Deityjhis harpy touch has changed 
the viands to corruption ; and that land, which you 
might have possessed in health, and wealth, and vigour, 
to support you in your hour of need, now writhes in 



AT UVERPOOL. 73 

t!ie agonies of death, unable even to lift the shroud 
iVith which famine and fatuity try to encumber her 
convulsion. This is what I see a pensioned press de- 
i^ominates tranquillity. Oh, wo to the land threatened 
with such tranquillity; sclitudinem faciunt, pacem ap- 
pellant; it is not yet the tranquillity of solitude; it is not 
yet the tranquillity of death; but if you would know what 
it is, go forth in the silence of creation, when every 
wind is hushed, and every echo mute, and all nature 
seems to listen in dumb and terrified and breathless 
expectation, go forth in such an hour, and see the terri- 
ble tranquillity by which you are surrounded ! How- 
could it be otherwise ; when for ages upon ages in- 
vention has fatigued itself with expedients for irritation; 
when, as I have read with horror in the progress of my 
legal studies, the homicide of a " mere Irishman" was 
considered justifiable; and when his ignorance was the 
origin of all his crimes, his education was prohibited 
by Act of Parliament /—when the people were worm- 
" eaten by the odious vermin which a church and state 
adultery had spawned; when a bad heart and brainless 
head, were the fangs by which every foreign adven- 
turer and domestic traitor fastened upon office; when 
the property of the native was but an invitation to 
plunder, and his non-acquiescence the signal for con- 
fiscation; when religion itself was made the odious 
pretence for every persecution, and the fires of hell 
were alternately lighted with the cross, and quenched 
in the blood of its defenceless followers! I speak of times 
that are passed: but can their recollections, can their 
consequences be so readily eradicated. Why, however, 
should I refer to periods that are so distant? Behold at 



74 SPEECH 

this instant, five millions of hcF people disqualified on 
account of their faith, and that by a country professing 
freedom ! and that under a government calling itself 
christian ! You (when I say you, of course I mean, not 
the high-minded people of England, but the men who 
misgovern us both) seem to have taken out a roving 
commission in search of grievances abroad, whilst yoii 
overlook the calamities at your own door, and of your 
own infliction. You traverse the ocean to emancipate the 
African; you cross the line to convert the Hindoo; you 
hurl your thunder against the savage 41gerine; but your 
ov/n brethren at home, who speak the same tongue, 
acknowledge the same King, and kneel to the same 
God, cannot get one visit from your itenerant humanity f 
Oh, such a system is almost too abominable for a name; 
it is a monster of impiety, impolicy, ingratitude, and 
injustice! The pagan nations of antiquity, scarcely acted 
on snch barbarous principles. Look to ancient Rome, 
with her sword in one hand and her constitution in the 
other, healing the injuries of conquest with the em- 
brace of brotherhood, and wisely converting the captive 
into the citizen. Look to her great enemy, the glorious 
Carthaginian, at the foot of the Alps, ranging his^ 
prisoners round him, and by the politic option of 
captivity or arms, recruiting his legions with the very 
men whom he had literally conquered into gratitude I 
They laid their foundations deep in the human heart,^ 
and their success was proportionate to their policy. 
You complain of the violence of the Irish Catholic: can 
you wonder he is violent? It is the consequence ©f 
your own infliction— 



AT LIVERPOOL. U 

^'The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear. 
The blood will follow where the knife is driven." 

Your friendship has been to him worse than hostihty; 
he feels its embrace but by the pressure of his fetters] 
I am only amazed he is not more violent. He fills your 
exchequer, he fights your battles, he feeds your clergy 
from whom he derives no benefit, he shares your bur- 
dens, he shares your perils, he shares every thing ex- 
cept your privileges, can you wonder he is violent P No 
matter what his merit, no matter what his claims, no 
matter what his services; he sees himself a nominal sub- 
ject, and a real slave; and his children, the heirs, per- 
haps of his toils, pferhaps of his talents, certainly of his 
disqualifications — can you tuoncler he is violent^ He sees 
every pretended obstacle to his emancipation vanished; 
Catholic Europe your ally, the Bourbon on the throne, 
the Emperor a captive, the Pope a friend, the asper- 
sions on his faith disproved by his allegiance to you 
against, alternately, every Catholic potentate in Christ- 
endom, and he feels himself branded with hereditary 
degredation — can you Huonder, then^ that he is violent? 
He petitioned humbly ; his tameness was construed 
into a proof of apathy. He petitioned boldly; his re- 
monstrance was considered as an impudent audacity. 
He petitioned in peace; he was told it was not the time. 
He petioned in war, he was told it was not the time, 
A strange interval, a prodigy in politics, a pause be- 
tween peace and war, which appeared to be just made 
for him, arose; I allude to the period between the re- 
treat of Louis and the restoration of Bonaparte; ,he 
petitioned then, and he was told it was not^the time. Oh, 



tS SPEECH 

shame! shame! shame! I hope he will petition no more 
to a parliament so equivocating. However, I am not 
sorry they did so equivocate, because I think they have 
suggested one common remedy for the grievances of 
both countries, and that remedy is, a Reform of that 
Pareiamejct. Without that, I plainly see, there is no 
hope for Ireland, there is no salvation for England ; 
they will act towards you as they have done towards us; 
they will admit your reasoning, they will admire your 
eloquence, and they will prove their sincerity by a 
strict perseverance in the impolicy you have exposed, 
and the profligacy you have deprecated. Look to 
England at this moment. To what a state have they not 
reduced her ! Over this vast island, for whose wealth 
the winds of Heaven seemed to blow, covered as she 
once was with the gorgeous mantle of successful 
agriculture, all studded over with the gems of art and 
manufacture, there is now scarce an object but industry 
in rags, and patience in despair; the merchant without 
a ledger, the fields without a harvest, the shops with- 
out a customer, the Exchange deserted, and the Gazette 
crowded, from the most heart rending comments on 
that nefarious system, in support of which, peers and 
contractors, stock-jobbers and sinfxurists, in short, the 
whole trained, collared, pampered, and rapacious pack 
of ministerial beagles, have been, for half a century> 
in the most clamorous and discordant uproar ! During ■ 
all this misery how are the pilots of the state employed? 
Why, in feeding the bloated mammoth of sinecure! in 
weighing the farthings of some underling's salary! in 
preparing Ireland for a garrison, and England for a 
poor-house! in the structure of Chinese palaces! th^ 



I 



AT LIVERPOOL, %7 

! 

decoration of dragoons, and the erection of public 
j buildings!! ! Oh;, it's easily seen we have a saint in the 
Exchequer! he has studied Scripture to some pur- 
pose! the famishing people cry out for breads and 
the scriptural minister gives Xh^nx atones i Such has been 
the result of the blessed Pitt system, which amid 
oceans of blood, and eight hundred millions expendi- 
ture, has left you, after all your victories, a triumphant 
dupe, a trophied bankrupt, I have heard before of 
states ruined by the visitations of Providence, de- 
vastated by famine, wasted by fire, overcome by ene- 
mies; but never until now did I see a state lilce England, 
impoverished by her spoils, and conquered by her suc- 
cesses ! She has fought the fight of Europe; she has 
purchased all its coinable blood ; she has subsidized all 
its dependencies in their own cause; she has conquered 
hy sea, she has conquered by land; she iias got peace, 
and, of course, or the Pitt apostles would not have 
made peace, she has got her "indemnity for the past, 
and security for the future," and here she is, after all 
her vanity and all her victories, surrounded by desola- 
tion, Hke one of the pyramids of Egypt ; amid the 
grandeur of the desert, full of magnificence and death, 
at once a trophy and a tomb! The heart of any re- 
flecting man must burn within him, when he thinks 
that the war thus sanguinary in its operations, and 
I confessedly ruinous in its expenditure, \vas even still 
j more odious in its principle ! It was a war avowedly 
j undertaken for the purpose of forcing France out of 
i her undoubted right of choosing her own monarch; a 
I war which uprooted the very foundation of the English 
! constitution ; which libelled the most glorious era irj 
G2 



rS SPEECH 

our national annals ; which declared tyranny eternal, 
and announced to the people, amid the thunder of artil- 
lery, that, no matter how aggrieved, their only allowable 
attitude was that of supplication; which, when it told 
the French reformer of 1793, that his defeat was just, 
told the British reformer of 1688, his triumph was trea- 
son, and exhibited to history, the terrific farce of a; 
Prince of the House of Brunswick, the creature of the 
Revolution, offerixg a humax hecatomb upon the 
GBAVE OF James the Second ! ! What else have you 
done? You have succeeded indeed in dethroning Napo- 
leon, and you have dethroned a monarch, who, with all 
his imputed crimes and vices, shed a splendour around 
royalty, too powerful for the feeble vision of legitimacy 
even to bear. He had many faults; I do not seek to 
palliate them. He deserted his principles; 1 rejoice that 
he has suffered. But still let us be generous even in 
our enmities. How grand was his march! Hov/ magnifi- 
cent his destiny! Say what we will, Sir, he will be the 
landmark of our times in the eye of posterity. The 
goal of other men's speed was his starting-post; crowns 
•were his play-things, thrones his footstool ; he strode 
from victory to victory; his path was " a plane of con- 
tinued elevations.'* Surpassing the boast of the too con- 
fident Roman, he but stamped upon the earth, and not 
only armed men, but states and dynasties, and arts and 
sciences, all that mind could imagine, or industry pro- 
duce, started up, the creation of enchantment., He has 
fallen— ^ns the late Mr. Whitebread said, " you made 
him and he unmade himself "—his own ambition was 
liis glorious conqueror. He attempted, with a sublime 
audacity, to grasp the fires of Heaven, and his heathen 



AT LIVERPOOL. 79 

i^etfibiition has been the vulture and the rock ! ! I do 
not ask what you have gained by it, because, in place 
of gaining" any thing, you are infinitely worse than when 
you commenced the contest ! But what have you done 
for Europe? What have you achieved for man ? Have 
morals been ameliorated? Has liberty been strengthened? 
Has anyone improvement in politics or philosophy been 
produced ? Let us see how. You have restored to 
Portugal a Prince of whom we know nothing, except 
that, when his dominions were invaded, his people 
distracted, his crown in danger, and all that could 
interest the highest energies of man at issue, he left his 
arse to be combated by foreign bayonets, and fled 
vith a dastard precipitation to the shameful security of 
1 distant hemisphere ! You have restored to Spain a 
wretch of even worse jthan proverbial princely in- 
gratitude ; who filled his dungeons, and fed his rack 
with the heroic remnant that braved war, and famine, 
and massacre beneath his banners ; vvho rewarded 
patriotism with the prison, fidehty with the torture, 
heroism with the scaffold, and piety with the Inquisi- 
tion; whose royalty was published by the signature of 
his death warrants, and whose religion evaporated in 
the €7ixbr Older in g of petticoats for the Blessed Virgin! You 
have forced upoa France a iamily to Whom misfortune 
could teach no mercy, or experience wisdom; vindictive 
in prosperity, servile in defeat, timid in the field, 
vacillating in the cabinet; suspicion amongst them, 
selves, discontent amongst their followers; their memo- 
ries tenacious but of the punishments they had pro- 
voked, their piety active but in subserviency to their 
priesthood, and their power passive but in the sub^ 



80 SPEECH 

jugation of their people ! Such are the dynasties you 
have conferred on Europe. In the very act, that of en- 
throning three individuals of the same family, you have 
committed in politics a capital error ; but Providence 
has countermined tlie ruin you were preparing ; and 
whilst the impolicy presents the chance, their im- 
potency precludes the danger of a coalition. As to the 
rest of Europe, how has it been anjeliorated ? What 
solitary benefit have the " deliverers" conferred? They 
have partitioned the states of the feeble to feed the 
rapacity of the powerful; and after having alternately 
adored and deserted Napoleon, they have wreaked 
their vengeance on the noble, but unfortunate fidelity. 
that spurned their example. Do you want proofs; look 
to Saxony, look to Genoa, look to Norway, but, aSove 
all, look to Poland ! that speaking monument of regsfl 
mUrder and legitimate robbery — 

Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of time — 
Sarmatia fell— unwept — without a crime! 

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, 
heroic, generous, martyred, and devoted people; here 
was an opportunity to convince Jacobinism that crowns 
and crimes were not, of course, co-existent, and that 
the highway rapacity of one generation might be atoned 
by the penitential retribution of another! Look to Italy; 
parcelled out to temporizing Austria — the land of the 
muse, the historian, and the hero ; the scene of every 
calassic recollection; the sacred fane of antiquity, where 
the genius of the world weeps and worships, and the 
spirits of the past start into life at the inspiring pil* , 



AT LIVERPOOL. Sj 

gnmage of some kindred Roscoe. You do yourselves 
honour by this noble, this natural enthusiasm. Lonjj 
may you enjoy the pleasure of possessing, never can 
you lose the pride of having produced the scholar 
without pedantry, the patriot without reproach, the 
Christian without superstition, the man without a 
blemish ! It is a subject I could dwell on with dehght 
for ever. How painful our transition to the disgusting 
path of the deliverers. Look to Prussia, after fruitless 
toil and wreathless triumphs, mocked with the promise 
of a visionary constitution. Look to France, chained 
and plundered weeping over the tomb of her hopes 
and her heroes. Look to England, eaten by the cancer 
of an incurable debt, exhausted by poor rates, sup- 
porting a civil list of near a million and a half, annual 
amount, guarded by a standing army of 149,000 men, 
misrepresented by a House of Commons, ninety of 
whose members in places and pensions derive 200,000/. 
in yearly emoluments from the minister, mocked with 
a military peace, and girt with the fortifications of a 
war-estabhshment ! Shades of heroic miUions these are 
thy achievements ! Mois^ster or Legitimacy, this is thy 
consummation ! ! ! The past is out of power; it is high 
time to provide against the future. Retrenchment and 
reform are now become not only expedient for our 
prosperity, but necessary to our very existence. Can 
any man of sense say that the present system should 
continue? What! when war and peace have alternately 
thrown every family in the empire into mourning and 
^poverty, shall the fattened tax-gatherer extort the 
.starving manufacturer's last shilling, to swell the un- 
merited and enormous sinecure of some wealtUv 



82 SPEECH 

pauper ? Shall a borough-mongering faction convert 
what is misnamed the National Representation into a 
mere instrument for raising the supplies which are to 
gorge its own venality? Shall the mock dignitaries of 
Whigism and Toryism lead their hungry retainers to 
contest the profits of an alternate ascendency over the 
prostrate interest of a too generous people? These are 
questions which I blush to ask, which I shudder to think 
must be either answered by ihe parliament or the 
people. Let our rulers prudently avert the interroga- 
tion. We live in times when the slightest remonstrance 
should command attention, when the minutest speck 
that merely dots the edge of the political horizon, may 
be the car of the approaching spirit of the storm? Oh! 
they are times whose omen no fancied security can 
avert; times of the most awful and portentous ad- 
monition. Establishments the most solid, thrones the 
most ancient, coalitions the most powerful, Jiave 
crumbled before our eyes ; and the creature of a 
moment robed, and crowned, and sceptred, raised his 
fairy creation on their ruins! The warning has been 
given; may it not have been given in vain! 

I feel. Sir, that the magnitude of the topics I have 
touched, and the imminency of the perils which seem 
to surround us, have led me far beyond the limits of a 
convivial meeting. I see I have my apology in your 
indulgence— but I cannot prevail on myself to trespass 
farther. Accept, again, Gentlemen, my most grateful 
acknowledgments. Never, never, can 1 forget this day ; 
in private life it shall be the companion of my solitude; 
and if, in the caprices of that fortune which will at 
times degrade the high and dignify the humble, I 



AT LIVERPOOL. 83 

should hereafter be called to any station of responsibi- 
lity, I think, I may at least fearlessly promise the 
friends who thus crowd around me, that no act of mine 
shall ever raise a blush at the recollection of their early 
encouragement. I hope, however, the benefit of this 
day will not be confined to the humble individual you 
have so honoured ; I hope it will cheer on the young 
aspirants after virtuous fame in both our countries, by 
proving to them, that however, for the moment, envy, 
or ignorance, or corruption, may depreciate them^ 
there is a reward in store for the man who thinks with 
integrity and acts with decision. Gentleman, you will 
add to the obligations you have already conferred, by 
delegating to me the honour of proposing to you the 
health of a man, whose virtues adorn, and whose ta- 
lents powerfully advocate our cause: I mean the 
health of yoar worthy Chairman, Mr. Shepherd. 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OF .GUTHRIE v. STERNE, 

DELIVERED IN 

THE COURT OF COMMOJ^T PLEAS, DUJBLIJV. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 

In this case I am of counsel for the plaintiff, who has 
deputed me, with the kind concession of my much 
more efricient colleagues, to detail to you the story of 
his misfortunes. In the course of a long friendship 
wliich has existed between us, originating in mutual | 
pursuits, and cemented by our mutual attachments, 
)iever, until this instant, did I feel any thing but plea- 
sure in the claims which it created, or the duty which 
it imposed. In selecting me, however, from this bright 
array of learning and of eloquence, I cannot help being 
pained at the kindness of a partiality which forgets its 
interest in the exercise of its affection, and confides the 
task of practised wisdom to the uncertain guidance of 
3'outh and inexperience. He has thought, perhaps, 
that truth needed no set phrase of speech ; that mis-. 



SPEECH m 

fortune should not veil the furrows which its tears had 
burned ; or hide, under the decorations of an artful 
drapery, the heart-rent heavings with which its bosom 
throbbed. He has surely thought that by contrasting 
mine with the powerful talents selected by his an- 
tagonist, he was giving you a proof that the appeal he 
made was to your reason, TK)t to your feelings— to the 
integrity of your hearts, not the exasperation of your 
passions. Happily, however, for him, happily for yoUj 
happily for the country, happily for the profession, on 
subjects such as this, the experience of the oldest 
amongst us is but slender ; deeds such as this are not 
indigenous to an Irish soil, or naturalized beneath an 
Irish climate. We hear of them, indeed, as we do ol" 
the earthquakes that convulse, or the pestilence that 
infects, less favoured regions; but the record of the 
calamity is only read with the generous scepticism cf 
innocence, or an involuntary thanksgiving to the Provi- 
dence that has preserved us. No matter how we may 
have graduated in the scale of nations; no matter with 
what wreath we may have been adorned, or what bles- 
sings we may have been denied; no matter what may 
have been our feuds, our folhes, or our misfortunes; it 
has at least been universally conceded, that our hearths 
were the home of the domestic virtues, and that love, 
honour, and conjugal fidelity^ were the dear and indis- 
putable deities of our household! around the fire side of 
the Irish hovel, hospitality circumscribed its sacred cir- 
cle; and a provision to punish, created a suspicion of 
the ^possibility of its violation. But of all the ties that 
bound—of all the bounties that blessed her— Ireland 
most obeyed, most loved, most revered the nuptial coii» 
H 



S6 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tract. She saw it the gift of Heaven, the charm of earth, 
the joy of the present, the promise of the future, the 
innocence of enjoyment, the chastity of passion, the 
sacrament of love; the slender curtain that shades the 
sanctuary of her marriage-bed, has in its purity the 
splendour of the mountain-snow, and for its protection 
the texture of the mountain adamant. Gentlemen, that 
national sanctuary has been invaded; that venerable 
divinity has been violated; and its tenderest pledges 
torn from their shrine, by the polluted rapine of a 
kindless, heartless, prayerless, remorseless adulterer! 
To you — religion defiled, morals insulted, law despised, 
public order foully violated, and individual happiness 
wantonly wounded, make their melancholy appeal. You 
will hear the facts with as much patience as indignation 
will allow — I will myself, ask of you to adjudge thera 
with as much mercy as justice will admit. 

The PlaintiiFin this case is John Guthrie; by birth, 
by education, by profession, by better than all, by prac- 
tice and by principles, 2i gentleman. Believe me, it is not 
from the common-place of advocacy, or from the bhnd 
partiality of friendship, that I say of him, that whether 
considering the virtues that adorn life, or the blandish- 
ments that endear it, he has few superiors. Surely, if a 
spirit that disdains dishonour, if a heart that knew not 
l^uile, if a life above reproach, and a character beyond 
suspicion, could have been a security against misfor- 
tunes, his lot must have been happiness. I speak in the 
presence of that profession to which he was an orna. 
ment, and with whose members his manhood has been 
familiar; and I say of him, with a confidence that defies 
refutation, that, whether we consider him in his private 




GUTHRIE V. STERNE. %7 

CMT Ihs public station, as a man or as a lawyer, there 
never breathed that being" less capable of exciting" 
enmity towards himself, or of offering, even by impli* 
cation, an offence to others. If he had a fault, it was, 
that, above crime, he was above suspicion; and to that 
noblest error of a noble nature he has fallen a victim. 
Having spent his youth in the cultivation of a mind 
ivhicli must have one day led him to eminence, he be- 
came a member of the profession by wliich I am 
surrounded. Possessing, as he did, a moderate inde- 
pendence, and looking forward to the most flattering 
prospects, it was natural for him to select amongst the 
other sex, some friend who should adorn his fortunes, 
and deceive his toils. He found such a friend, or 
thought he found her, in the person of Miss Warren, 
the only daughter of an eminent solicitor. Young, 
beautiful, and accomplished, she was *^ adorned with 
all' that earth or heaven could bestow to make her 
amiable." Virtue never found a fairer temple; beauty 
never veiled a purer sanctuary; the graces of her mind 
retained the admiration which her beauty had attracted, 
and the eye, which her charms fired, became subdued 
and chastened in the modesty of their association. She 
was in the dawn of life, with all its fragrance round her, 
and yet so pure, that even the blush which sought to 
hide her lustre, but disclosed the vestal deity that 
burned beneath it. No wonder an adoring husband 
anticipated all the joys this world could give him; no 
wonder that the parental eye, which beamed upon 
their union, saw, in the perspective, an old age of 
happiness, and a posterity of honour. Methinks I see 
them at the sacred altar, joining those hands which 



i,8 SPEFXH m THE Cx\SE OF 

Heaven commanded none should separate, repaid tor 
many a pang^ of anxious nurture by the sweet smile of 
filial piety; and in tlie holy rapture of tlie rite, worship- 
pini;^ the power that blessed their cliildren, and gave 
them hope their names should live hereafter. It was 
virtue^s vision! None but fiends could envy it. Year 
after year confirmed the anticipation; four lovely 
children blessed their union. Nor was their love tlie 
summer passion of prosperity; misfortune proved, afflic- 
tions chastened it; before the mandate of that mysteri- 
ous Power, which will at times despoil the paths of 
innocence, to decorate the chariot of triumphant 
villany, my client had to bow in silent resrgnalion. He 
owed his adversity to the benevolence of his spirit; he 
*« went security for fridndsj" those friends deceived 
him, and he was obliged to seek in other lands, that 
safe asylum which his own denied him. He was glad to 
accept an offer of professional business in Scotland 
during his temporary embarrassment. With a conjugal 
devotion, Mrs. Guthrie accompanied him; and in her 
smile the soil of a stranger was a home, the sorrows of 
adversity were dear to him. During their residence in 
Scotland, a period of about a year, you will find they 
lived as they had done in Ireland, and as they continued 
to do until this calamitous occurrence, in a state of un- 
interrupted happiness. You shall hear, most satisfacto- 
rily, that their domestic life was unsullied and undis. 
turbed. Happy at home, happy in a husband's love, 
happy in her parents' fondness, happy in the children 
.she had nursed, Mrs. Guthrie carried into every circle 
-"-and there was no circle in which her society was not 
eonrted— that cheerfulness which never was a com*. 



GUIHRIE V. S lERNE, 89 

panion of guilt, or a stranger to innocence. My client 
saw her the pride of his family, the favourite of his 
friends — at once the organ and ornament of his happi- 
ness. His ambition awoke, his industry redoubled; and 
that fortune, which though for a season it may frown, 
never totally abandons probity and virtue, had began 
to smile on liim. He was beginning to rise in the ranks 
of his competitors, and rising with sach a character, 
that emulation itself rather rejoiced than envied. It 
was at this crisis, in this, the noon of his happiness, 
and day-spring of his fortune, that, to the ruin of both, 
the Defendant became acquainted with his family. 
With the serpent's wile, and the serpent's wickedness, 
he stole into the Eden of domestic life, poisoning all 
that was pure, polluting all that was lovely, defying 
God, destroying man; a demon in disguise of virtue, a 
herald of hell in the paradise of innocence. His name. 
Gentlemen, is \Viluam Peter Bakeii DuifsxANviLiii 
Sterne; one would tliinkhe had epithets enough, with- 
out adding to them the title oi' Multerer, Of his charac- 
ter I know but little, and I am sorry that I know so 
much. If I am instructed rightly, he is one of those 
vain and vapid coxcombs, whose vices tinge the frivolity 
of their follies with something of a more odious charac* 
ter than ridicule — with just head enough to contrive 
crime, but not heart enough to feel for its conse- 
quences; one of those fashionable insects, that folly has 
painted, and fortune plumed, for the annoyance of our 
atmosphere; dangerous alike in their torpidity and 
tlieir animation; infesting where they fly, and poisoning 
where they repose. It was through the introduction of 
Mr. Fallon, the son of a most respectable lady, then 
H2 



90 SPEECH fN THE CASE OP 

resident in Temple-street, and a near relative of Mr^ 
Guthrie, that the defendant and this unfortunate woman 
first became acquainted: to such an introduction the 
shadow of a suspicion could not possibly attach. Occu» 
pied himself in his professional pursuits, my client had 
little leisure for the amusement of society; however, to 
the protection uf Mrs. Fallon, her son, and daughters, 
moving in the first circles, unstained by any possible 
imputation, he without hesitation intrusted all that was 
dear to him. No suspicion could be awakened as to any 
jnan to whom such a female as Mrs. Fallon permitted an 
intimacy with her daughters; while at her house then, 
and at tlie parties which it originated, the defendant and 
Mrs. Guthrie had frequent opportunities of meeting. 
Who could have suspected, that, under the very roof of 
virtue, in the presence of a venerable and respected 
matron, and of that innocent family, whom she had 
reared up in the sunshine of her example, the most 
abandoned profligate could have plotted his iniquities! 
Who would not rather suppose, that, in the rebuke of 
such a presence, guilt would have torn away the gar- 
land from its brow, and blushed itself into virtue. But 
the depravity of this man was of no common dye; the 
asylum of innocence was selected only as the sanctuary 
of his crimes; and the pure and the spotless chosen as 
his associates, because they would be more unsuspected 
subsidiaries to his wickedness. Nor were his manner 
and his language less suited than his society to the con- 
cealment of his objects. If you believed himself, the 
sight of suffering affected his nerves; the bare mention 
of immorality smote upon his conscience; an inter- 
course with the continental courts had refined his mind 



GUTHRIE V, STERNE. M 

into a painful sensibility to the barbarisms of Ireland! 
and yet an internal tenderness towards his native land 
so irresistibly impelled him to improve it by his resi- 
dence, that he was a hapless victim to the excess of his 
feelings! — the exquisiteness of his polish! — and the 
excellence of his patriotism! His English estates, he 
said, amounted to about 10,000/. a year; and he re- 
tained in Ireland only a trifling 3000/. more, as a kind 
of trust for the necessities of its inhabitants! — In short, 
according to his own description, he was in religion a 
saint, and in morals a stoic— a sort of wandering phi- 
lanthropist! making, like the Sterne, who, he confessed, 
had the honour of his name and his connection, a 
Sentimental Journey in search of objects over whom his 
heart might weep, and his sensibility expand itself! 

How happy it is, that, of the philosophic profligate 
only retaining the vices and the name, his rashness has 
led to the arrest of crimes, which he had all his turpi, 
tude to commit, without any of his talents to embellish. 
It was by arts such as I have alluded to — by pre- 
*tending the most strict morality, the most sensitive 
honour, the most high and undeviating principles of 
virtue, — that the defendant banished every suspicion of 
his designs. As far as appearances went, he was exactly 
what he described himself. His pretentions to morals 
he supported by the most reserved and respectful 
behaviour: his hand was lavish in the distribution of his 
chtiTities; and a splendid equipage, a numerous retinue, 
a system of the most profuse and prodigal expenditure, 
left no doubt as to tlie reahty of his fortune. Thus 
circumstanced he found an easy admittance to the 
lioiLse of Mrs. Fallon, and there he had many oppor- 



92 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tunities of seeing Mrs. Guthrie; for, between his famitj 
and that of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my 
client had much anxiety to increase the connection. 
They visited together some of the public amusenlents; 
they partook of some of the fetes in the neighbourhood 
of the metropolis; but upon every occasion, Mrs. 
Guthrie was accompanied by her own mother, and by 
the respectable females of Mrs. Fallon's family. I say, 
upon everj occasion: and I challenge them to produce 
one single instance of those innocent excursions, upon 
which the slanders of an interested calumny have been 
let loose, in which this unfortunate lady jvas not 
matronized by her female relatives, and those some of 
the most spotless characters in society. Between Mr. 
Guthrie and the defendant, the acquaintance was but 
slight. Upon one occasion alone they dined togethef; 
it was at the house of the plaintiff's father-in-law; and, 
that you may have some illustration of the defendant's 
character, I shall briefly instance liis conduct at this 
dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he 
apologized for any deficiency of etiquette in his visits,* 
declaring that he had been seriously occupied in 
arranging the affairs of his lamented father, who, 
though tenant for life, had contracted debts to an enor- 
mouS^ amount. He had already paid upwards of 10,000/. 
which honour and not law compelled him to discharge; 
as, sweet soul! he could not bear that any one should 
suffer unjustly by his family ! His subsequent conduct 
was quite consistent with this hypocritical preamble: at 
dinner, he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie; expati- 
uted to her husband upon matters of morality; entering 
ijuo a high-flown panegyric on the virtues of domestic 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 93 

life, and the comforts of connubial happiness. In short, 
had there been any idea of jealousy, his manner would 
have banislied it ; and the mind must have been worse 
than sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his 
surface morality. Gracious God ! when the heart once 
admits guilt as its associate, how every natural emotion 
flies before it! Surely, surely, here was a scene to re- 
claim, if it were possible, this remorseless defendant, — 
admitted to her father's table under the shield of hospi- 
tality, he saw a young and lovely female surrounded by 
her parents, her husband, and her children; the prop of 
those parents' age; the idol of that husband's love; 
the anchor of those children's helplessness; the sacred 
orb of their domestic circle; giving their smile its light, 
and their bliss its being; robbed of whose beams the 
little lucid world of their home must become chill, un- 
cheered, and colourless for ever. He saw them happy, 
he saw them united; blessed with peace, and purity, and 
profusion; throbbing with sympathy and throned in 
love; depicting the innocence of infancy, and the joys 
of manliood before the venerable eye of age, as if to 
soften the farewell of one world by the pure and 
pictured anticipation of a better. Yet, even there, hid 
in the very sun-beam of that happiness, the demon of 
its destined desolation lurked. Just Heaven! of what 
materials was that heart composed, which could medi- 
tate coolly on the murder of such enjoyments; which 
innocence could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor 
hospitality oppease; but v/hich, in the very beam and 
bosom of its benefaction, vvarmed and excited itself into 
», more vigorous venom ? Was there no sympathy in 



1^4 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the scene? Was there no remorse at the crime? Was 
there no horror at its consequences? 

**Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd! 
Was there no pity, no relenting" ruth. 
To show their parents fondling* o'er their child. 
Then paint the ruin'd pair, and their distraction wild!'* 

BuRirs, , 

Ko! no! He was at that instant planning their destruc- 
tion; and, even within four short daj's, he deliberately 
reduced those parents to childishness, that husband to 
widowhood, those smiling infants to anticipate orphan- 
age, and that peaceful, hospitable, confiding family, to 
helpless, hopeless, irremediable ruin! 

Upon the first day of the ensuing July, Mr. Guthrie 
was to dine with the Connaught bar, at the hotel of 
Portobello. It is a custom, I am told, with the gentle- 
men of that association to dine together previous to the 
circuit; of course my client could not have decorously 
absented himself. Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little 
feverish, and he requested that on his retiring, she 
would compose herself to rest ; she promised him she 
would; and when he departed, somewhat abruptly, to 
put some letters in the post-office, she exclaimed, 
'' What! John, are you.going to leave me thus?" He re- 
turned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, even 
for any time, without that token of affection. I am thus 
minute, gentlemen, that you may see, up to the last 
moment, what little cause the husband had for sus» 
picion, and how impossible it was for him to foresee a 
perfidy which nothing short of fnfatuation tould have 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. §5 

produced. He proceeded to his companions with no 
other regret than that necessity, for a moment, forced 
him from a home, which the smile of affection had 
never ceased to endear to him. After a day, however, 
passed, as such a day might have been supposed to 
pass, in the flow of soul, and the philosophy of plea- 
sure, he returned hom^e to share his happiuess with 
her, without whom no happiness ever had been perfect. 
Alas ! he was never to behold her nfiore ! Imagine, if 
you can, the phrenzy of his astonishment, in being in- 
formed by Mrs. Porter, tl;ie daughter of the former 
landlady, that about two hours before, she had attended 
Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's shop; that a carriage 
had drawn up at the corner of the street, into which a 
gentleman, whom she recognized to be a Mr. Sterne, 
had handed her, and they instantly departed. I must 
tell you, there is every reason to believe, that this 
woman was the confidant of the conspiracy. What a 
pity that the object of that giailty confidence had not 
something of humanity; that, as a female, she did not 
feel for the character of her sex; that, as a mother, she 
did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family! 
What pangs might she not have spared? My client, could 
hear no more; even at the dead of night he rushed 
into the street, as if in its own dark hour he could dis- 
cover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peace- 
ful family of the horror-struck Mrs. Fallon; in vain» 
with the parents of the miserable fugitive, did he 
mingle the tears of an impotent distraction; in vain, a 
miserable maniac, did he traverse the silent streets of 
the metropolis, aflfrighting virtue from its slumber with 
the spectre of its own ruin. I will not harrow you with 



96 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

its heart-rending recital. But imagine you see him, 
when the day had dawned, returning wretched to his 
deserted dwelling; seeing in every chamber a memorial 
of his loss, and hearing every tongueless object elo- 
quent of his wo. Imagine you see him, in the reverie 
of his grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a 
vision, and awakened only to the horrid truth by his 
helpless children ask'mg hinifor their mother/ — Gentle- 
men, this is not a picture of the fancy; it literally 
occurred : there is something less of romance in the 
reflection, which his children awakened in the mind of 
their afflicted father; he ordered that they should be 
immediately habited in mourning. How rational some- 
times are the ravings of insanity! For all the purposes 
of maternal life, poor innocents! they have no mother! 
her tongue no more can teach, her hand no more can 
tend them; for them there is not " speculation in her 
eyes;" to them her hfe is something worse than death; 
as if the awful grave had yawned her forth, she moves 
before them shrowded all in sin, the guilty burden of 
its peaceless sepulchre. Better, far better, their httle 
feet had followed in her funeral, than the hour which 
taught her value, should reveal her vice, — mourning 
her loss, they might have blessed her memory; and 
shame need not have rolled its fires into the fountain of 
their sorrow. 

As soon as his reason became sufficiently collected^ 
Mr. Guthrie pursued the fugitives; he traced them suc- 
cessively to Kiidare, to Carlow, Waterford, Milford- 
haven, on through Wales, and finally to lifracombe, in 
Devonshire, where the clue was lost. I am ghid that, 
in this route and restlessness of their guilt, as the crime 
they perpetrated was foreign to our soil, they did noi 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. W 

make that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not 
follow them through this joyless journey, nor brand by 
my record the unconscious scene of its pollution; But 
philosophy never taught, the pulpit never enforced, a 
more imperative morality than the itinerary of that ac- 
cursed tour promulgates. Oh ! if there be a maid or 
matron in this island, balancing between the alternative- 
of virtue and crime, trembling between the hell of the 
seducer and the adulterer, and the heaven of the pa- 
rental and the nuptial home, let her pause upon this 
one, out of the many horrors I could depict, — and be 
converted. I will give you the relation in tlxe very 
words of my brief; I cannot improve upon the sim- 
plicity of the recital: 

*• On the 7i\\ of July they arrived at Milford; the cap- 
tain of the packet dined with them, and was astonished 
at the magnificence of her dress." (Poor wretch! she 
was decked and adorned for the sacrifice!) The next 
day they dined alone. Towards evening, the house- 
maid, passing near their chamber heard Mr. Sterne 
scolding f and apparently beating her ! In a short time 
after, Mrs. Guthrie rushed out of her chamber into the 
drawing-room, and throwing herself in agony upon the 
sopha, she exclaimed Oh! what an unhappy ivrefch lam! 
— / left my home ivhere I was happy, too happy ^ seduced 
by a man -who has deceived me. — My poor husband! uny 
dear children! Oh! if they HJoould even let m.y little Wil- 
xiAM live ivith me! -'it roould be some consolation to my 

BHOKEN heart! 

" Alas! nor children more can she behold, 
Nor friends, nor sacred home," 
I 



$8 SPEECH m THE CASE OF 

Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes! well 
might she mourn over the memory of days when the sun 
of heaven seemed to rise but for her happiness! well 
might she recall the home she had endeared, the chil- 
dren she had nursed, the hapless husband, of whose 
Jife she was the pulse! But one short week before, this 
earth could not reveal a lovelier vision: — Virtue 
blessed, affection followed, beauty beaaied on her; the 
the light of every eye, the charm of every heart, she 
moved along the cloudless chastity, cheered by the 
song of love, and circled by the splendours she created! 
Behold her now, the loathsome refuse of an adulterous 
bed; festering in the very infection of her crime; the 
scoff and scorn of their unmanly, merciless, inhuman 
author! But thus it ever is with the votaries of guilt; 
the birth of their crime is the death of their enjoyment; 
and the wretch who flings his offering on its altar, falls 
an immediate victim to the flame of his devotion. I am 
glad it is so ; it is a wise, retributive dispensation; it 
bears the stamp of a preventive Providence. I rejoice 
it is so, in the present instance, first, because this pre- 
mature infliction must ensure repentance in the 
wretched sufferer; and next, because, as* this adulte- 
rous fiend has rather acted on the suggestions of his 
nature than his shape^ by rebelling against the finest 
impulse of man, he has made himself an outlaw from 
the sjmpathies of humanity. — Why should he expect 
til at charity from you, which he would not spare even 
to the misfortunes he had Inflicted.? For the honour of 
the form in which he is disguised, I am willing to hope 
he was so blinded by his vice, that he did not see the 
full extent of those misfortunes. If he had feelings* 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 99 

capable of being touched, it is not to the fjided victim 
of her own weakness, and of his wickedness, that J 
wonld direct theiif. There is something in her crime 
which affrights charity from its commiseration. But, 
Gentlemen, there is one, over whom pity may mourn, 
—for he is wretched; and mourn without a blush, — for 
he is guiltless. How shall I depict to you the deserted 
husband ? To every other object in this catalogue of 
calamity there is some stain attached which checks 
compassion. — But here — Oh! if ever there was a man 
amiable, it was that man, Oh! if ever there was a hus- 
band fond, it was that husband. His hope, his joy, his 
ambition was domestic; his toils were forgotten in the 
affections of his home; and amid every adverse variety 
yf fortune, hope pointed to his children, — and he was 
comforted. By this vile act that hope is blasted, that 
house is a desert, those children are parentless! In vain 
do they look to their surviving parent: hi§ heart is bro- 
ken, his mind is in ruins; his very form is fading from 
the earth. He had one consolation, an aged mother, on 
whose life the remnant of his fortunes hung, and on 
whose protection of his children his remaining pros- 
pects rested; even that is over; — she could not survive 
his shame, she never raised her head, she became 
hearsed in his misfortune; — he has followed her funeral. 
If this be not the climax of human misery, tell me in 
what does human misery consist? Wife, parent, fortune, 
prospects, happiness, — all gone at once, — and gone for 
ever! For my part, when I contemplate this, 1 do not 
wonder at the impression it has produced on him; I do 
not wonder at the faded form, the dejected air, the 
emaciated countenance, and all *tlie ruinous mil 



iOO SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

mouldering trophies, by which misery has marked its i 
triumph over youth, and health, and happiness? I know, 
that in the hordes of what is called fashionable life, there 
is a sect of philosophers, wonderfully patient of their 
fellow-creatures' sufferings; men too insensible to feel 
for any one, or too selfish to feel for others. I trust 
there is not one amongst you who can even hear of 
such calamities without affiiction; or, if there be, I pray 
that he may never know their import by experience; 
that having, in the wilderness of this world, but one 
dear and darling object, without whose participation 
bliss would be joyless, and in whose sympathies sorrow 
has found a charm; whose smile has cheered his toil, 
whose love has pillowed his misfortunes, whose angel- 
spirit, guiding him through danger, and darkness, and 
despair, amid the world's frown and the friend's 
perfidy, was more than friend, and world, and all to 
him! God forbid, that by a villain's wile, or a villain's 
wickedness, he should be taught how to appreciate the. 
wo of others in the dismal solitude of his own. Oh, nol 
I feel that I address myself to human beirfigs, who, 
knowing the value of what the world is worth, are 
capable of appreciating all that makes it dear to us. 

Observe, however, — lest this crime should want ag- 
gravation — observe, 1 beseech you, the /enoc? of its ac- 
complishment. My client was not so young as that the 
elasticity of his spirit could rebound and bear him above 
the pressure of the misfortune, nor was he withered by 
age into a comparative insensibility; but just at that 
temperate interval of manhood, when passion had 
ceased to play, and reason begins to operate; when 
love, gratified, left liiim nothing to desire; and fidelity* 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 101 

long tried, left him nothing- to apprehend: he was just 
too, at that period of his professional career, when, his 
patient industry having* conquered the ascent, he was 
able to look around him from the height on which he 
rested. For this, welcome had been the day of tumult, 
and the pale midnight lamp succeeding; welcome had 
been the drudgery of form ; welcome the analysis of 
crime; welcome the sneer of envy, and the scorn of 
dulness, and all the spurns which " patient merit of the 
unworthy takes." For this he had encountered, perhaps 
the generous rivalry of genius, perhaps the biting 
blasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of that deadly 
slander, which coiling round the cradle of his young 
ambition, might have sought to crush him in its en- 
venomed foldings, 

" Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afir? 

Ah! who can^tell how many a soul sublime 

Hath felt the influence of malignant star, 

And waged with fortune an eternal war?" 

Can such an injury as this admit of justification? I think 
the learned counsel will concede it cannot. But it may 
be paHiated. Let us see how. Perhaps the defendant 
was young and thoughtless; perhaps unmerited pros- 
perity raised him above the pressure of misfortune, and 
the wil4 pulses of impetuous passion impelled him to a 
purpose at which his experience would have shuddered. 
Quite the contrary. The noon of manhood has almost 
passed over him; and a youth, spent in the recesses of 
a debtor's prison, made him familiar with every form of 
12 



102 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

human misery: he saw what misfortune was; — it did 
not teach him pity: he saw the effects of guilt; — he 
spurned the admonition. Perhaps in the solitude of a 
single life, he had never known the social blessedness 
of marriage; — he has a wife and children; or, if she be 
not his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds 
another to the calender of his seduction. Certain it is, 
he has little children, who think themselves legitimate; 
will liis advocates defend him, by proclaiming their 
bastardy? Certain it is, there is a wretched female, his 
own cousin too, who thinks herself his wife; will they 
protect him, by proclaiming he has only deceived her 
into being his prostitute? Perhaps his crime, as in the 
celebrated case of Howard, immortalized by Lord 
Erskine, may have found its origin in parental cruelty; 
it might perhaps have been that in their spring of life, 
when fancy waved her fairy wand around them, till all 
above was sun-shine, and all beneath was flowers; when 
to their clear and charmed vision this ample world was 
but a weedless garden, where every tint spoke 
Nature's loveliness, and every sound breathed Heaven's 
melody, and every breeze was but embodied fragrance; 
it might have been that, in this cloudless holiday, Love 
wove his roseate bondage round them, till their young 
hearts so grew together, a separate existence ceased, 
and life itseU" became a sweet identity; it might have 
been that, envious of this paradise, some worse than 
demon tore them from each other to pine for years in 
absence, and at length to perish in a palliated impiety. 
Oh! Gentlemen, in such a case. Justice herseUj with 
her uplifted sword, would call on Mercy to preserve 
the victim. There was no such palliation: — the period. 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 103 

of their acquaintance was little more than sufficient for 
the maturity of their crime; and they dare not libel 
Love, by shielding under its soft and sacred name the 
loathsome revels of an adulterous depravity. It might 
have been, the husband's cruelty left a too easy inroad 
for seduction. Will they dare to assert it? Ah! too well 
they know he would not let " the winds of heaven visit 
her face too roughly." Monstrous as it is, I have heard, 
indeed, that they mean to rest upon an opposite pallia- 
tion; I have heard it rumoured, that they mean to rest 
the wife's infidelity upon the husband's fondness. I 
know that guilt, in its conception mean, and in its com- 
mission tremulous, is, in its exposure, desperate and 
audacious. I know that, in the fugitive panic of its 
retreat it will stop to fling its Parthian poisons upon 
the justice that pursues it. But I do hope, bad and 
abandoned, and hopeless as their cause is,— I do hope, 
for the name of human nature, that I have been de- 
ceived in the rumours of this unnatural defence. 
Merciful God! is it in the presence of this venerable 
Court, is it in the hearing of this virtuous jury, is it ia 
the zenith of an enlightened age, that 1 am to be told, 
because female tenderness was not watched with 
worse than Spanish vigilance, and iiarrassed with v/orse 
than eastern severity; because the marriage-contractis 
not converted into the curse of incarceration; because 
woman is allowed the dignity of a human soul, and man 
does not degrade himself into a human monster; be- 
cause the vow of endearment is not made the vehicle 
of deception, and the altar's pledge is not become the 
passport of a barbarous perjury; ,and that too in a land 
of courage and chivalry, wh^re the female form has 



104 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

been held as a patent direct from the Divinity, bearing 
in its chaste and charmed helplessness the assurance of 
its strength, and the amulet of its protection: am I to 
be told, that the demon adulterer is therefore not only 
to perpetrate his crimes, but to vindicate himself, 
through the very virtues he has violated? I cannot 
believe it; I dismiss the supposition: it is most "mon- 
strous, foul, and unnatural." Suppose that the plaintiff 
pursued a different pi^nciple; suppose, that his conduct 
had been the reverse of what it was; suppose, that in 
place of being kind, he had been cruel to this deluded 
female; that h,e had been her tyrant, not her protector; 
her jailor, not her Imsband: what then might have been 
the defence of the adulterer? Might he not then say, 
and say with speciousness, " True, I seduced her into 
crime, but it was to save her from cruelty; true, she is 
my aduitress, because he was her despotP Happily, 
Gentlemen, he can say no such thing.. 1 have heard it 
said, too, during the ten months of calumny, for which, 
by every species of legal delay, they have procrasti- 
iiated this trial, that, next to the impeachment of the 
Imsdand's tenderness, they mean to rely on what they j 
libel as the levity of their unhappy victim! I know not , 
by what right any man, but above all, a married man, j 
presumes to scrutinize into the conduct of a married 
female. I know not, Gentlemen, how you would feel,| 
under the consciousness that every coxcomb was at| 
liberty to estimate the warmth, or the coolness of your 
wives, by the barometer of his vanity, that he might 
uscertaiii precisely the prudence of his invasion on 
their virtue. But I do know, that such a defence, 
coming from such a quarter, would not at all surprise 



I 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE, 105 

me. Poor — unfortunate — fallen female! How c^n she 
expect mercy from her destroyer? How cun she expect 
that he will revere the character he was careless of 
preserving ? How can she suppose that, after having 
made her peace the pander of his appetite, he will not 
make her reputation the victim of his avarice? Such a 
defence is quite to be expected : knowing him, it will 
not surprise me; if I know you, it will not avail him. 

Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprece- 
dented in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, 
and robbed of every palUative, it is natural you should 
inquire, what w^as the motive for its commission? What 
do you think it was? Providentially — miraculously, I 
should have said, for you never could have divined — the 
Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do you think 
it was, Gentlemen? */2m^/V/on/ But a few days before 
this criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him 
for the almost princely expenditure of his habits, "Oh," 
says he, "never mind; Si erne must do something by 
which Slerne may be knoiJonP' I had heard, indeed, that 
ambition was a vice, but then a vice so equivocal, it 
verged on virtue; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, 
sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnificent; that 
though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be 
famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played 
in heaven's lightnings; that though it might fall in 
ruins, it arose in fire, and was with all so splendid, that 
even the horrors of that fall became immerged and 
mitigated in the beauties of that aberration! But here 
is an ambition! — base and barbarous and illegitimate; 
with all the grossness of the vice, with none of the 
l^randeur of the virtue; a mean, muffled, dastard in- 



iOe SPJIECH IN THE CASE OF 

cendiary, who, in the silence of sleep, and in the shades 
of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane, 
■which it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege 
to have violated! 

Gentlemen, my part is done; yours is about to com- 
mence. You have heard this crime— its origin, its pro, 
gress, its aggravations, its novelty among us. Go and 
tell your children and your country, whether or not it is 
to be made a precedent. Oh, how awful is your respon- 
sibility ! I do not doubt that you will discharge your- 
selves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, in- 
deed, that you will mourn with me over the almost 
solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system of 
juricprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of such 
an injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of 
money. I think you will lament the failure of the great 
Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within thf 
cognizance of a criminal jurisdiction: it was a subject 
suited to his legislative mind, worthy of his feeling 
heart, worthy of his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my 
Lord, even remotely allude to Lord ErsUne, without 
gratifying myself by saying of him, that, by the rare 
union of all that was learned in law with all that was 
lucid in eloquence; by the singular combination of all 
that was pure in morals with all that was profound in 
wisdom; he has stamped upon every action of his life 
the blended authority of a great mind, and an unques- 
tionable conviction. I think. Gentlemen, you will regret 
the failure of such a man in such an object. The merci- 
less murderer may have manUness to plead; the high- 
way robber may have want to palliate; yet they both 
are objects of criminal infliction: but the murderer of 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 10? 

Connubial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy;— the 
tobber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this 
case, may be' his instrviment;— he is suffered to calculate 
on the infernal fame which a superfluous and unfelt 
expenditurn may purchase. The law, however, is so: 
and we must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In 
our adjudication of that remedy, I do not ask too much > 
when I ask the full extent of your capability; how poor, 
even, so, is the wretched remuneration for an injury 
which nothing can repair, — for a loss which nothing" can 
alleviate? Do you think that a mine could recompense 
my client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than 
life to him ? 

" Oh, had she been but true. 
Though heaven had made him such another worlds 
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite 
He'd not exchange. her for it!" 

I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand 
in his situation? What would you take to have your 
prospects blasted, your profession despoiled, your peace 
l-uined, your bed profaned, your parents heart-broken, 
your children parentless? Believe me. Gentlemen, if it 
were not for those children, he would not come here to- 
day to seek such remuneration; if it were not that, by 
your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent de- 
frauded wretches from wandering beggars, as well as 
orphans, on the face of the earth. Oh, I know I need 
not ask this verdict from your mercy; I need not extort 
it from your compassion; I will reaeive it from your 



108 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

justice. I do conjure you, not as fathers, but as hus- 
bands; — not as husbands, but as citizens; — not as citi- 
zens, but as men;— not as men, but as Christians; — 
by all your obligations, public, private, morale and 
religious; by the hearth profaned; by the home de- 
solated; by the canons of the living God foully spurned; 
-—save oh ! save your fire-sides from the contagion, 
your country from the cringe, and perhaps thousands, 
yet unborn, from the shame, and sin, and sorrow of 
this exaihple! 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OF O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL. 

DELIVERED IN 
THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GJ.LWAY, 



My Lords and Gentlemen, 

I AM instructed, as of counsel for tlie PiaintiiT, to 
state to you the circumstances in which this action has 
originated. It is a source to me, I will confess it, of 
much personal embarra^^ent. Feebly, indeed, can I 
attempt to convey to you, the feehngs with which a 
perusal of this brief has affected me; painful to you 
must be my enefficient transcript—painful to all who 
have the common feehngs of country or of kind, must 
be this calamitous compendium of all that degrades our 
individual nature, and of all that has, for many an age 
of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national 
character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this profession^ 
that every hour our vision may be blasted by some 
withering crime, and our hearts wrung with some 
agonizing recital; there is no frightful form of viee, or 
K 



110 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

no disgusting phantom of infirmity, which guilt doe;& 
not array in spectral train before us. Horrible is the 
assemblage! humiliating the application! but thank God, 
even amid those very scenes of disgrace and of de- 
basement, occasions oft arise for the redemption of our 
dignity; occasions, on vi^hich the virtues breathed into 
us, by heavenly inspiration, walk abroad in the divinity 
of their exertion; before whose beam the wintry robe 
falls from the form of virtue, and all the midnight 
images of horror vanish into nothing. Joyfully and 
piously do I recognise such an occasion; gladly do I 
invoke you to the generous participation; yes. Gentle- 
men, though you must prepare to hear much that de- 
grades our nature, much that distracts our country — 
though all that oppression could devise against poor— 
though all that persecution could inflict upon the 
feeble — though all that vice could wield against the 
pious — though all that the venom of a venal turpitude 
could pour upon the patriot, must with their alternate 
apparition afflict, affright, and humiliate you, still do I 
hope, that over the charneWiouse of crime'-over this 
very sepulchre, where corruption sits enthroned upon 
the merit it has murdered, that voice is at length about 
to be heard, at which the martyred yictim will arise to 
vindicate the ways of Providence, and prove that even 
in its worst adversity there is a might and immortality 
in virtue. 

The Plaintiff, Gentlemen, you have heard, is the Rev. 
Cornelius O' Mullan; he is a clergyman of the church 
of Rome, and became invested with that venerable 
appellation, so far back as September, 1804. It is a title 
which you know, in this country, no rank ennobles, no 
treasure enriches, no establishment supports; its pos» 



0*MULLAN y. M'KORKILL. Ill 

sessor stands undisguised by any rag of this world's 
decoration, resting all temporal, all eternal hope upon 
his toil, his talents, his attainments, and iiis piety — 
doubtless, after all, the highest honours, as well as the 
most imperishable treasures of the man of God, Year 
after year passed over my client, and each anniversary 
only gave him an additional title to these qualifications. 
His precept was but the handmaid to his practice; the 
sceptic heard him, and was convinced; the ignorant 
attended him, and were taught; he smoothed the death- 
bed of too heedless wealth; he rocked the cradle of the 
infant charity; oh, no wonder he walked in the sunshine 
of the public eye, no wonder he toiled through the 
pressure of the public benediction. This is not an idle 
declamation; such was the result his ministry produced, 
that within five years from the date of its commence- 
ment, nearly 2000/. of voluntary subscription enlarged 
the temple where such precepts were taught, and such 
piety exemplified. Such was the situation of Mr- 
O'Mullan, when a dissolution of parliament took place, 
and an unexpected contest for the representation of 
Derry, threw that county into unusual commotion. One 
of the candidates was of the Ponsonby family— a family- 
devoted to the interests, and dear to the heart of 
Ireland; he naturally thought that his parliamentary 
conduct entitled him to the vote of every Catholic in. 
the land; and so it did, not only of every Catholic, but 
of every Christian who preferred the diffusion of the 
Gospel to the ascendancy of a sect, and loved the 
principles of the constitution better than the pretensions 
of a party. Perhaps you will think with me, that there 
IS a sort of posthumous interest thrown about that event. 



112 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

when I tell you, that the candidate on that occasion was 
the lamented Hero over whose tomb the tears, not only 
of Ireland, but of Europe, have been so lately shed; he 
who, mid the blossom of the world's chivalry, died con- 
quering a deathless name upon the field of Waterloo. 
He applied to Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and that 
interest was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his 
bishop having been previously obtained. Mr. Ponsonby 
succeeded; and a dinner, to which all parties were in- 
vited, and from which all party spirit was expected to . 
absent itself, was given to commemorate one common 
triumph — the purity and the privileges of election. In 
other countries, such an expectation might be natural; 
the exercise of a noble constitutional privilege, the tri- 
umph of a great popular cause, might not unaptly ex- 
pand itself in the intercourse of the board, and unite all 
hearts in the natural bond of festive commemoration. 
But, alas, Gentlemen, in this unhappy land, such has 
been the result, whether of our faults, our folHes, or 
our misfortunes, that a detestable disunion converts the 
very balm of the bowl into poison, commissioning its 
vile and hurpy offspring, to turn even our festivity into 
famine. My client was at this dinner; it was not to be 
endured thata Catholic should pollute with his presence 
the civic festivities of the loyal Londonderry! such an 
intrusion, even the acknowledged sanctity of his 
character could not excuse; it became necessary to 
insult him. There is a toast, which, perhaps, few in this 
united country are in the habit of hearing, but it is the 
invariable watchword of the Orange orgies; it is briefly 
entitled "The glorious, pious, and immortal merhory of 
the great and good King William." J have no doubt 



OWIULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 113 

i^^lmplicity of your understandings is puzzled how 
to discover any offence in the commemoration of the 
Revolution Hero. The loyalists of Derry are more wise 
in their generation. There, when some Bacchanalian 
bigots wish to avert the intrusive visitations of their 
own memory, they commence by violating the me- 
mory of King William.* Those who happen to have 
shoes or silver in their fraternity — no very usual oc- 
currence — thank His Majesty that the shoes are not 
woodei}, and that the silver is not brass, a commodit}^, 
by tlie bye, of vi^hich any legacy would have been 
quite superfluous. The Pope comes in for a pious 
benediction; and the toast concludes with a patriotic 
wish, for all his persuasion, by the consummation of 
which there can be no doubt, the hempen manufac- 
tures of this country would experience a very conside- 
rable consumption. Such, Gentlemen, is the enliglit- 
ened, and liberal, and social sentiment of which the 
first sentence, all that is usually given, for^is the 
suggestion. I must not omit that it is generXily taken 

* This loyal toast handed down by Orange tradition, 
is literally as follows, — we give it for ^he edification of 
the sister island. 

"The glorious, piotis, and immortal memory of the 
great and good King William^vvho saved us from Pope 
and Popery, James and ^avery, brass money and 
wooden shoes;] here is b^d luck to the Pope, and a 
hempen rope to all Papists ." 

It is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times 
nine, amid various? mysteries which none but the elezt 
can comprehemi. 

K2 



114 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 



1 



standing*, always providing it be in the fjower of the coin' 
pany. This toast was pointedly given to insult Mr. 
O'MuIlan. Naturally averse to any altercation, hismostj 1 
obvious course was to quit the company, and this he^ 
did immediately. He was, however, as immediately re- 
called by an intimation, that the Catholic question, and 
might its claims be considerpd justly and liberally, had 
been toasted as a peace-offering by Sir George Hill, the 
City Recorder, My client had no gall in his disposition; 
he at once clasped to his heart the friendly overture, 
and in such phrase as his simplicity supplied, poured 
forth the gratitude of that heart to the liberal Recorder. 
Poor O'Mullan had the wisdom to imagine that the 
politician's compliment was the man's conviction, and 
that a table toast was the certain prelude to a parlia- 
mentary suffrage. Despising all experience, he applied 
the adage, Coeliim non animum Tnutant qui trans marc 
current, to the Irish patriot. I need not pajnt to you the 
consternation of Sir George, at so unusual and so un- 
parliamentary a construction. He indignantly disclaimed 
the intention imputed to him, denied and deprecated 
the AnfashioKable inference, and acting on the broad 
scale of an impartial policy, gave to one party the 
weight of his vote, and to the other, the (no doubt in 
his opinion) equahy valuable acquisition of his elo« 
quence; by the way, ho unusual compromise amongst 
modern politicians. 

The proceedings of this dinner soon became public. 
Sir George, you may be sure, was httle in love with 
his notoriety. However, Gentlemen, the sufferingps of 
the powerful are seldom without sympathy; if they re- 
ceive not the solace of the disinterested and the sin- 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 115 

cere, they are at least sure to find a substitute in the 
miserable professions of an interested hypocrisy. Who 
could " imagine, that Sir George, of all men, was to 
drink faom the spring of Catholic consolation? yet so it 
happened. Two men of that communion had the hardi- 
hood and the servility, to frame an address to him, re. 
fleeting upon the pastor, who was its pride, and its 
ornament. This address, with the most obnoxious 
commentaries, was instantly published by the Derry 
Journalist, who from that hour, down to the period of 
his ruin; has never ceased to persecute my client, with 
all that the most dehberate falsehood could invent, and 
all that the most infuriate bigotry could perpetrate. 
This journal, I may as well now describe to you; 
it is one of the numerous publications which the 
misfortunes of this unhap])y land have generated, 
and which has grovirn into considerable affluence by 
the sad contributions of the puL^fic calamity. There 
is not a provincial village in Ireland, which some such 
official fiend does not infest, fabricating a gazette of 
fraud and falsehood, upon all who presume toj^dvocate 
her interests, or uphold the ancient religion o^her peo» 
pie; — the worst foes of government, under pretence of 
giving it assistance; the deadliest enemies to the Iv'ish 
name, under the mockery of supporting its character; 
the most licentious, irrehgious, illiterate banditti, that 
ever polluted the fair fields of literature, under the 
spoliated banner of the press. Bloated with the public 
spoil, and blooded in the chase of character, no abilities 
can arrest, no piety can awe; no misfortune affect, no 
benevolence conciliate them ; tlie reputation of the 



116 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



1 



livling, and the memory of the dead, are equally plun- 
dered in their desolating progress; even the awful 
sepulchre affords not an asylum to their selected vic- 
tim. Human Hyenas ! they will rush into the sacred 
receptacle of death, gorging their ravenous and brutal 
rapine, amid the memorials of our last infirmity ! Such 
is a too true picture of what I hope unauthorisedly 
misnames itself the ministerial press of Ireland. Amid 
that polkited press, it is for you to say, whether The 
Londonderry Journal stands on an infamous elevation. 
When this address was published in the name of the 
Catholics, that calumniated body, as was naturally to 
be expected, became universally indignant. 

You may remember. Gentlemen, amongst the many 
expedients resorted to by Ireland^ for the recovery of 
her rights, after she had knelt session after session at 
tiie bar of the legislature, covered with the wounds of 
glory, and praying redemption fromi the chains that re- 
ivarded them ; — you may remember, I say, amongst 
many vain expedients of supplication and remonstrance, 

.<r her Catholic population delegated a board to consult 
on their affairs, and forward their petition. Of that body, 
fashionable as the topic has now become, far be it from 

i me to speak with disrespect. It contained mach talent, 
much integrity; and it exhibited what must ever be to 
iTie an interesting spectacle, a great body of my fellow 
men, and fellow christians, claiming admission into that 
constitution which their ancestors had achieved by 
their valour, and to which they were entitled as their 
inheritance* This is no time, this is no place for the 
discussion of that question; but since it does force it- 
self incidentally upon mej I will say, that as on the one 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 117 

hand, I cannot fancy a despotism more impious, or 
more inhuman, than the political abasement here, on 
account of that faith by which men hope to win an 
happy eternity hereafter ; so on tlie other, 1 cann^ot 

VAISCY A VISIOJf INT ITS ASPECT MORE DIVIDE THAI^ THE 
ETERXAL CROSS RET) WITH THE MARTYr's BLOOD, Al!fD 
31A1)IANT WITH THE PILGRIM's HOPE, REARED BY THE 
PATRIOT AKD THE CHRISTIAN HAND HIGH IN THE VAN OF 

UNIVERSAL LIBERTY. Of this board the two volunteer 
framers of the address happened to be members. The 
body who deputed them, instantly assembled and de- 
clared their delegation void. You would suppose, Gen- 
tlemen, that after this decisive public brand of repro- 
bation, those oiRcious meddlers would have avoided 
its recurrence, by retiring from scenes for which natiire 
and education had totally unfitted them. Far, however, 
from acting under any sense of shame, those excluded 
outcasts even summoned a meeting to appeal from the 
sentence the public opinion had pronounced on them. 
The meeting assembled, and after almost the day's de- 
liberation on their conduct, the former sentence was 
unanimously confirmed. The men did not deem it pru- 
dent to attend themselves, but at a late hour, when the 
business was coucluded, when the resolutions had 
passed, when the chair was vacated, when the multi- 
tude was dispersing, they attempted with some Orange 
followers to obtrude into the chapel, which in large 
cities, such as Derry, is the usual place of meeting. An 
angry spirit arose among the people. Mr. O'Mullan, as 
was his duty, locked the doors to preserve the house 
of God from profanation, and addressed the crowd iii 
such terms, as induced them to repair peaceably tp 



118 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

their respective habitations. I need not paint to you 
the bitter emotions with which these deservedly dis- 
appointed men were agitated. All hell was at work 
within them, and a conspiracy was hatched against the 
peace of my client, the vilest, the foulest, the most in- 
fernal that ever vice devised, or demons executed. 
Restrained from exciting a riot by his interference, 
they actually swore a riot against him, prosecuted him 
to conviction, worked on the decaying intellect of his 
bishop to desert him, and amid the savage war-whoop 
of this slanderous Journal, all along inflaming the pub- 
lic mind by libels the most atrocious, finally flung this 
poor, religious, unoffending priest, into a damp and 
desolate dungeon, where the very iron that bound, 
had more of humanity than the despots that surrounded 
him. I am told, they triumph much in this conviction. 
I seek not to impugn the verdict of that jury ; I have 
no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with 
me that every member of my client's creed was care- 
fully excluded from that jury — no doubt they acted coU' 
scientiously. It weighs not with me that every man im- 
pannelled on the trial of the priest, was exclusively 
Protestant, and that, too, in a city, so prejudiced, that 
not long ago, by their Corporation law, no Catholic 
dare breathe the air of Heaven within its walls — no 
doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, 
that not three days previously, one of that jury was 
heaad publicly to declare, he wished he could perse- 
cute the Papist to his death — no doubt they acted con- 
scientiously. It weighs not with me, that the public mind 
had been so inflamed by the exasperation of this libel- 
ler, that an impartial trial was utterly impossible. Let 



0*MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 119 

Uiem enjoy their triumph. But for myself^ knowing him 
as I do, here in the teeth of that conviction, I declare 
it, I would rather be that man, so aspersed, so impri- 
soned, so persecuted, and hanie his conscientiousness, 
than stand the highest of the courtliest rabble that ever 
crouched before the foot of power, or fed upon the 
people— plundered alms of despotism. Oh, of short 
duration is such demoniac triumph. Oh, blind and 
groundless is the hope of vice, imagining its victory 
can be more than for the moment. This very day I hope 
will prove that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season ; 
and that sooner or later, their patience tried, and their 
purity testified, prosperity will crown the interests of 
probity and worth. 

Perhaps you imagine. Gentlemen, that his person 
imprisoned, his profession gone, his prospects ruined, 
and what he held dearer than all, his character de- 
famed ; the malice of his enemies might have rested 
from persecution. " Thus bad begins, but worse re- 
mains behind." Attend, 1 beseech you, to what now 
follows, because I have come in order, to the particular 
libel, which we have selected from the innumerable 
calumnies of this Journal, and to which we call your 
peculiar consideration. Business of moment, to the 
nature of which, I shall feel it my duty presently to 
advert, called Mr. O'MuUan to the metropohs. Through 
the libels of the Defendant, he was at this time in dis- 
favour with his bishop, and a rumour had gone abroad, 
that he was never again to revisit his ancient congre- 
gation. The Bishop in the interim returned to Derry, 
and on the Smnday following, went to officiate at the 
parish chapel. All ranks crowded tremulously round 



120 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



1 



lum; the widow sought her guardian; the orphan his 
protector ; the poor their patron; the rich their guide; 
the ignorant their pastor; all, all, with one voice, de- 
mand his recall, by whose absence the graces, the 
charities, the virtues of life, were left orphans in their 
communion. Can you imagine a more interesting 
spectacle ? The human mind never conceived->the 
human hand never depicted a more instructive or de- 
lightful picture. Yet, will you beheve it ! out of this I 
very circumstance, the Defendant fabricated the most I 
audacious, and if possible, the most cruel of his Libel?. 
Hear his words; — "O'Mullan," says he "was convicted , 
and degraded, for assaulting his own Bishop, and the j 
liecorder of Derry, in the parish chapel!" Observe the 
disgusting malignity of the Libel — observe the crowded 
damnation which it accumulates on my client — ob- 
serve all the aggravated crime which it embraces.— ; 
First, he assaults his venerable Bishop — the great i 
Ecclesiastical Patron, to whom he was sworn to be 
obedient, and against whom he never conceived or 
articulated irreverence. Next, he assaults the Recorder 
of Derry-— a Privy Councillor, the supreme municipal 
authority of the City. And where does he do so? 
Gracious God, in the very temple of thy worship! That 
is, says the inhuman Libeller — he a citizen — he a 
Clergyman insulted not only the civil but the ecclesi- 
astical authorities, in the face of man, and in the house 
of prayer; trampling contumeUously upon all human 
law, amid the sacred altars, where he believed the i 
Almighty witnessed the profanation! I am so horror- | 
struck at this blasphemous and abominable turpitude, ! 
T can scarcely proceed. What will you say, Gentle- ! 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 121 

men, when 1 inform you, that at the very time this 
atrocity was imputed to him, he was in the eity of 
Dublin, at a distance of one hundred and twenty miles 
from the venue of its commission ! But, oh! v/heu 
calumny once begins its work, how vain are the impe- 
diments of time and distance! Before the sirocco of its 
breath all nature withers, and age, and sex, and inno- 
cence, and station, perish in the unseen, but certain 
desolation of its progress! Do you wonder O'Mullau 
sunk before these accumulated calumnies; do you 
wonder the feeble were intimidated, the wavering de- 
cided, the prejudiced confirmed ? He was forsaken by 
his Bishop; he was denounced by his enemies — his 
very friends fled in consternation from the "stricken 
deer;" he was banished from the scenes of his child- 
hood, frcm the endearments of his youth, from the 
iield of his fair and honourable ambition. In Viun did 
he resort to strangers for subsistence;' on the very 
wings of the wind, the calumny preceded him; and 
from that hour to this, a too true apostle, he has been 
'* a man of sorrows,'* " not knowing where to lay his 
bead." I will not appeal to your passions; alas! how in- 
adequate am I to depict his sufferings; you must take 
them from the evidence. I have told you, that at the 
time of those infernally fabricated libels, the Plaintiff 
was in Dubhn, and I promised to advert to the cause 
by which his absence was occasioned. 

Observing in the course of his parochial duties, the 
deplorable, 1 had almost said the organized ignorance of 
the Irish peasantry — a?i ignorance whence all their crimeif, 
and most of their sufferings originate,^ observing also^ 
that there was no publicly established literary institu=. 
L 



122 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tlon to relieve them, save only to the charter-schools, 
which tendered learning to the shivering child, as a 
bounty upon apostacy to the faith of his fathers ; he 
determined if possible to give them the lore of this 
world, without offering as a mortgage upon the inheri- 
tance of the next. He framed the prospectus of a school, 
for the education of five hundred children, and went 
to the metropohs to obtain subscriptions for the pur- 
pose. I need not descant upon the great general advan- 
tage, or to this country the peculiarly patriotic conse- 
quences, which the success of such a plan must have 
produced. No doubt, you have all personally consider- 
ed — no doubt, you have all personally experienced, 
that of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence 
to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which breathes 
a purer fragrance, or bears a heave nlier aspect than 
education. It is a companion which no misfortunes can 
depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no des- 
potism enslave : at home a friend, abroad an introduc- 
tion, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament, it 
chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace 
and government to genius. Without it, what is man? 
A splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating be- 
tween the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, 
and the degradation of passions participated with 
brutes; and in the accident of their alternate ascen- 
dency shuddering at the terrors of an hereafter, or 
embracing the horrid hope of annihilation. What is this 
wondrous world of his residence? 

A mighty maze, and all without a plan: 



O'MULLAN V. M'KOIIKILL. 12S 

a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, 
or ornament or order. But hght up within it the torch 
of knowledge, and how wondrous the transition! The 
seasons change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape 
lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocea;i rolls in its magnifi- 
cence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, 
and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises reveal- 
ed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries 
resolved ! The phenomena which bewilder, the preju^ 
dices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, 
vanish before education. Like the holy sym.bol which 
blazedupon the cloud before the hesitating Constantine, 
if man follow but its precepts, purely, it will not only 
lead him to the victories of this world, but open the 
very portals of Omnipotence for his admission. Cast 
your eye over the monumental map of ancient gran- 
deur, once studded with the stars of empire, and the 
splendours of philosophy. What erected the little state 
of Athens into a powerful comuionweahh, placing in 
her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing 
round her brow the im^icrishable chaplet of literary 
fume? what ei!tended Rome, the haunt of banditti, into 
universal empire? what animated Sparta with that high 
unbending adamantine courage, which conquered 
nature herself, and has fixed her in the sight of future 
ages, a model of pubHc virtue, and a proverb of national 
independence? Wliat but those wise public institutions 
which strengthened their minds with early apphcation, 
informed their infancy with the principles of action, 
and sent them into the world, too vigilant to be de- 
ceived by its calms, and too vigorous to be shaken by 
its whirlwinds? But surely, if there be a people in the 



12i SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

world, to whom the blessings of education are pecul'i' , 
applicable, it is the Irish people. Lively, ardent, intelli- 
gent, and sensitive; nearly all their acts spring from 
impulse, and no matter how that impulse be given, it is 
immediately adopted, and the adoption and the exe- 
cution are identified. It is this principle, if principle 
it can be called, which renders Ireland, alternately, the 
poorest and the proudest country in the world; now 
chaining her in the very abyss of crime, now lifting her 
to the very pinnacle of glory; which in the poor, pro- 
scribed, peavSant Catholic, crowds the jail and feeds the 
gibbet; which in the more fortunate, because more 
educated Protestant, leads victory a captive at her car, 
and holds echo rtiute at her eloquence; making a national 
monopoly of fame, and, as it were, attempting to natu- 
ralize the achievements of the universe. In order that 
this libel may want no possible aggravation, the de- 
fendant published it when my client v^as absent on this 
work of patriotism ; he published it when he was 
absent; he published it when he was absent on a work 
of virtue; and he published it on all the authority 
of his local knowledge, when that very local know- 
ledge must have told him, that it was destitute of 
the shadow of a foundation. Can you imagine a more 
odious complication of all that is deliberate in 
malignity, and all that is depraved in crime? I promised. 
Gentlemen, that I would not harrow your hearts, by 
exposing all that agonizes mine, in the contemplation 
of individual suffering. There is, however, one subject . 
connected with this trial, public in its nature, and uni. ; 
versal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an ex- I 
empiary verdict; I mean the liberty of the press — a j 
theme which I approach with mingled sensations of 



O'MIjLLAN V, i^rKORKlLL. 12^ 

awe, and agony, and admiration. Considering all that 
we too fatally have seen — all that, perhaps, too fearfully 
we may have cause to apprehend, 1 feel myself cling to 
that residuary safeguard, witli an aifection no tempta- 
tions can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lullj 
with a fortitude that peril but iPifuriates. In the direful 
retrospect of experimental despotism, and the hideous 
prospect of its possible re-animation, I clasp it with the 
desperation of a widowed female, who in the desolation 
of lier house, and the destruction of her household, 
hurries the last of her offspring through the flames, at 
once the relic of her joy, the depository of her wealth, 
and the remembrancer of her happiness. It is the duty 
of us all to guard strictly tiiis inestimable privilege — ^a 
privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the 
licentiousness of those who wilfully abuse it. No, it is 

KOT IN THE AUaOGAlS'CE UF POWER; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE 
ARTIFICES OF LAW; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE FATUITY OF 
princes; no, it is not in the VENALITT of PARLIA- 
MENTS- TO CRUSH THIS MI&HTT, THIS MAJESTIC PRIVILEGE; 
REVILED, IT WILL REMONSTRATE; MURDERED, IT WILL 
REVIVE: BURIED, IT WILL RE ASCEND; THE YERT ATTEMPT 
AT ITS OPPRESSION WILL PROVE THE TRUTH OF ITS IM- 
MORTALITY, AND THE ATOM THAT PRESUMED TO SPURN, 
WILL FADE AWAY BEFORE THE TRUMPET OF ITS RETRI- 
BUTION I Man holds it on the same principle that he 
does his soul: the powers of this world cannot prevail 
against it; it can only perish through its own depravity. 
What then shall be his fate, through whose instru- 
mentality it is sacrificed! Nay more, what shall be his 
fate, who, intrusted with the guardianship of its security, 
becomes the tiMityroiis accessary to its ruiur Nay more;, 
L2 



SPiEECH IN THE CASE 

what sliall be his fate, by whom its powers delegated 
for the pnblic good, are converted into the calamities 
of private virtue; against whom, industry denounced^ 
merit undermined, morals calumniated, piety aspersed, 
all through the means confided for their protection, cry" 
aloud for vengeance? What shall be his fate? Oh, I 
would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, 
and so sinning, as I would some demon, who, going 
forth consecrated, in the name of the Deity, the book 
of life on his lips, and the dagger of death beneath his 
robe, awaits the sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, 
and unveins the heart's blood of confiding adoration f 
vShould not such a case as this require some palliation? 
Is there any? Perhaps the defendant might have been 
misled as to circumstances? No, he lived upon the spot, 
and had the best possible information. Do you think 
he believed in the truth of the publication ? No; he 
knew that in every syllable it was as false as perjury. 
Do you think that an anxiety for the Catholic commu- 
nity might have inflamed him against the imaginary 
dereliction of its advocate? No; the very essence of his 
Journal is prejudice. Do you think that in the ardoui' 
of liberty he might have venially transgressed its 
boundaries? No! in every line he licks the sores, and 
pampers the pestilence of authority. I do not ask you 
to be stoics in your investigation. If you can discover 
in this libel one motive inferentially moral, one single 
virtue which he has plundered and misapplied, give 
him its benefit. I will not demand such an effort of 
your faith, as to imagine, that his northern constitution 
could, by any miracle, be fired into the admirable but 
mistaken energy of enthusiasm; — that he could for one 



O^MULLAN V. M'KOUKILL. 12/ 

moment have felt the inspired phrenzy of those loftier 
spirits, who, under some daring but divine delusion, 
rise into the arch of an ambition so bright, so baneful, 
yet so beauteous, as leaves the world in wonder whe- 
ther it should admire or mourn — whether it should 
weep or worship! No; you will not only search in vain 
for such a palliative, but you will find this publication 
springing from the most odious origin, and disfigured 
hy the most foul accompaniments, founded in a bigotry 
at which hell rejoices, crouching with a sycophancy a 
which flattery blushes, deformed by a falsehood at 
which perjury would hesitate, and to crown the climax 
of its crowded infamies, committed under the sacred 
shelter of the Press; as if this false, slanderous, syco- 
phantic slave, could not assassinate private worth with- 
out polluting public privilege; as if he could not sacri- 
fice the character of the pious without profaning the 
protection of the free; as if he could not poison learn- 
ing, liberty, and religion, unless he filled his chalice 
from the very font whence they might have expected 
to derive the waters of their salvation! 

Now, Gentlemen, as to the measure of your dam- 
ages: You are the best judges on that subject; though, 
indeed, I have been asked, and I heard the question 
with some surprise, — why it is that we have brought 
this case at all to be tried before you. To that I might 
give at once an unobjectionable answer, namely, that 
the law allowed us. But I will deal much more candidly 
with you. We brought it here; because it was as far as 
possible from the scene of prejudice; because no possi- 
ble partiality could exist; because, in this happy and uni- 
ted country, less of the bigotry which distracts the rest 



1J8 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

of Ireland exists, than in any other with which we are ac- 
quainted; because the nature of the action, which we 
have mercifully brought in place of a criminal prose- 
cution, — the usual course pursued in the present day, 
at least against the independent press of Ireland, — gives 
them, if they have it, the power of proving a justifica- 
tion; and I jjerceive they have emptied half the north 
here fov the purpose. But I cannot anticipate an ob- 
jection, which no doubt shall not be made. If this ha- 
bitual libeller should characteristically instruct his 
counsel to hazard it, that learned gentleman is much 
too wise to adopt it, and must know you much too well 
to insult you by its utterance. What damages, then. 
Gentlemen, can you give ? I am content to leave the 
defendant's crime altogether out of the question, but 
how can you recompense the sufferings of my client ? 

Who shall estimate the cost of priceless reputation 

that impress which gives this human dross its currency, 
without which we stand despised, debased, depre- 
ciated? Who shall repair it mjured? Who can redeem 
it lost? Oh! well and truly does the great philosopher 
of poetry esteem the world's wealth as '' trash" in the 
comparison. Without it, gold has no value, birth no 
distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm, age no 
reverence; or, should I not rather say, without it every 
treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every 
dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations, »nd 
accomplishments of life, stand, like the beacon-blaze 
upon a rock, warning the world that its approach is 
danger— that its contact is death. The wretch without 
it is under an eternal quarantine; — no friend to greet — 
iio homQ to harbour him. The voyage of his life ba- 



M'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 129 

comes a joyless peril; and in the midst of all ambition 
can achieve, or avarice arnass, or rapacity plunder, he 
tosses on tlie surge— a buoyant pestilence! But, Gentle- 
men, let me not degrade into the selfishness of indivi- 
dual safety, or individual exposure, this universal prin- 
ciple: it testifies a higher, a more ennobling origin. It 
is this which, consecrating the humble circle of the 
hearth, will at times extend itself to the circumference 
of the horizon; which nerves the arm of the patriot to 
save his country; which lights the lamp of the philoso- 
pher to amend man : which, if it does not inspire, will 
yet invigorate the martyr to merit immortality; which, 
when one world's agony is passed and the glory of an- 
other is dawning, will prompt the prophet, even inhis 
chariot of fire, and in his vision of heaven, to bequeath 
to mankind the mantle of his memory! Oh divine, oU 
delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the 
inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; 
pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which it 
inspires ! Can you conceive a more atrocious injury 
than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit 
— to rob society of its cliarm, and solitude of its solace; 
not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting 
the very grave, the refuge of the suflTerer, into the 
gate of infamy and of shame! i can conceive few crimes 
beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from 
me that which can be repaired by time : but what pe- 
riod can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my 
person affects that which' medicine may remedy : but 
what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander.? 
He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my pro^ 
fession, upbraids me with that which industry may x%^ 



130 



SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



trieve, and integrity may purify; but what riches shall 
redeem the Bankrupt fame? what power shall blanch 
the sullied snow of character? Can there be an injury 
more deadly? Can there be a crime more cruel? It is 
without remedy — it is without antidote— it is without 
evasion ! The re^«)tile calumny is ever on the watch. 
From the fascination of its eye no activity can escape; 
from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It 
has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; 
it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, 
save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to dis- 
gorge them at the withered shrine, where envy idol- 
izes her own infirmities. Under such a visitation how 
dreadful wonld be the destiny of the virtuous and the 
good if the providence of our constitution had not 
given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the 
principle, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush 
and crumble the altar of its idolatry! 

And now. Gentlemen, having toiled through this 
narrative of unprovoked and pitiless persecution, I 
should with pleasure consign my client to your hands, 
if a more imperative duty did not still remain to me, 
and that is, to acquit him of every personal motive in 
the prosecution of this action. No; in the midst of 
slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he 
has had no thought, but, that avS his enemies evinced 
how malice could persecute, he should exemplify how 
religion could endure; that if his piety failed to affect 
the oppressor, his patience might at least avail to for- 
tify the aflicted. He was as the rock of Scripture before 
the face of infidelity. The rain of the deluge had fallen 
—it only smoothed his asperities: tlie wind of the tern- 



O'MULLAN V. M'KOItKlLL. 1 U 

pest beat—it only blanched his brow: the rod, not of 
prophecy, but of persecution, smote him; and the de- 
sert, ghttering with the Gospel dew, became a miracle 
of the faith it would have tempted! No, Gentlemen; 
not selfishly has he appealed to this tribunal; but the 
venerable religion wounded in his character, — but the 
august priesthood vilified in his person, — but the doubts 
of the sceptical, hardened by his acquiescence, — but 
the fidelity of the feeble, hazarded by his forbearance^ 
goacled him from the profaned privacy of the cloister 
into this repulsive scene of pubhc accusation. In him 
this reluctance springs from a most natural and cha- 
racteristic delicacy: in us it would become a most over- 
strained injustice. IVo, Gentlemen: though with him 
we must remember morals outraged, religion assailed, 
law violated, the priesthood scandalized, the press be- 
trayed, and all the disgusting calender of aljstract evil; 
yet with him we must not reject the injuries of the in- 
dividual sufferer. We must pictwre to ourselves a young 
man, partly by tiie self-denial of parental love, partly 
by the energies of personal exertion, struggling into a 
profession, where, by the pious exercise of his talents, 
lie may make the fame, the wealth, the flatteries of 
this world, so many angel heralds to the happiness of 
the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor; his 
practice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sor- 
row seeks his presence as a sanctuary; and in his path 
of peace, should he pause by the death-bed of despair- 
ing sin, the soul becomes iinparadised in the light of 
his benediction! Imagine, Gentlemen, you see him 
*,hus; and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate 
as to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anticipate 
f(?r a moment the melancholy evidence we must too 



132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

soon adduce to you. Behold him, by foul, deliberate, 
and infamous calumny, robbed of tlie profession he had 
so struggled to obtain, swindled from the flock he had 
so laboured to ameliorate, torn from the school where 
infant virtue vainly mourns an artificial orphanage, 
hunted from the home of his youth, from the friends 
of his heart, a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless 
exile, hanging in some stranger scene, on the precari- 
ous pity of the few, whose charity might induce their 
compassion to bestow, what this remorseless slanderer 
would compel their justice to withhold! I will not pur- 
sue this picture; I will not detain you from the pleasure 
of your possible compensation; for oh! divine is the 
pleasure you are destined to experience; — dearer to 
your hearts shall be the sensation, than to your pride 
shall be the dignity it will give you. What! though the 
people will hail the saviours of their pastor: what! 
though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of 
their brother; though many a peasant heart will leap 
at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm 
their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, 
to character, the venerable friend who taught their 
trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and 
religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness 
of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest 
here. Oh no! if there be light in instinct, or truth in 
Revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you 
shall await the last inevitable verdict, the eye of your 
hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your 
ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by thi.s 
day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted 
Apostle, from the grasp of an insatiate malice-^from 
the fang of a worse than Thilistine persecution. 



SPEECH 

IN THE CASE OF CONNAtJHTON v. DILLON"; 

DELIVERED IN 

THE COUJVTY COURTHOUSE OF ROSOMMON, 



My Lord and Gentlemen^ 

In this case I am one of the counsel for the Plaintiffs 
who lias directed me to explain to you the wrongs for 
which, at your hands, he solicits reparation. It appears 
to me a case which undoubtedly merits much consider- 
ation, as Well from the novelty of its appearance 
amongst us, as for the circumstances by which it is at- 
tended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that in my mind, 
not the least interesting of those circumstances is the 
poverty of the man who has made this appeal to me. 
Few are the consolations which soothe — hard must be 
the heart which does not feel for him. He is. Gentle, 
men, a man of lowly birth and humble station; with 
little wealth but from the labour of his hands, with no 
rank but the integrity of his character, with no recrea- 
tion but in the circle of his home, and with no ambition, 
but, when his days are full, to leave that little circle 
the inheritance of an honest name, and the treasure of 
a good man's memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in 
M 



134 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



'V^B 



this respect to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on 
the contrary, is amply either blessed or cursed with 
those quuhfications, which enable a man to adorn or 
disgrace the society in which he lives. He is, I under- 
stand, the representative of an honourable name, the 
relative of a distinguished family, the supposed heir to 
their virtues, the indisputable inheritor to their riches. 
He has been for many years a resident of your county, 
and has had the advantage of collecting round him all 
those recollections, which, springing from the scenes 
of school-boy association, or from the more matured 
enjoyments of the man, crowd as it were unconsciously 
to the heart, and cling with a venial partiality to the 
companion and the friend. So impressed, in truth, has 
he been with these advantages, that, surpassing the 
usual expenses of a trial, he has selected a tribunal 
%vhere he vainly hopes such considerations will have 
weight, and where he well knows my client's humble 
rank can have no claim but to that which his miseries 
may entitle him. 1 am sure, however, he has wretch- 
edly miscalculated. I know none of you personally; but 
I have no doubt I am addressing men who will not 
prostrate their consciences before privilege or power; 
who will remember that there is a nobility above birth^ 
and a wealth beyond riches; who will f^el that, as in 
the eye of that God to whose aid they have appealed, 
there is not the minutest difference between the rag 
and the robe, so in the contemplation of that law which 
constitutes our boast, guilt can have no protection, or 
innocence no tyrant; men who will have pride, in 
proving, that the noblest adage of our noble constitution 
is not an illusive shadow; and that the peasant's cottage 



eONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 135 

roofed with straw and tenanted by poverty, stands 
as inviolated fronn all invasion as in the mansion of the 
monarch. 

My client's name, Gentlemen, is Connaghton, and 
when I have given you his name you have almost all his 
history. To cultivate the path of honest industry com- 
prises, in one line, ** the short and simple annals of the 
poor." This has been his humble, but at the same time 
most honourable occupation. It matters little with what 
artificial nothings chance may distinguish the name, or 
decorate the person: the child of lowly life, with virtue 
for its handmaid, holds as proud a title as the highest — 
as rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. Well has the 
poet of our country said — that 

^* Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made; 
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride, 
When once destroy'd can never be supplied." 

For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, which 
can render humble life respected, or give the highest 
stations their most permanent distinctions, my client 
stands conspicuous. A hundred years of sad vicissitude, 
and, in this land, often of strong temptation, have rolled 
away since the little farm on which he lives received 
his family: and during all that time not one accusation 
has disgraced, not one crime has sullied it. The same 
spot has seen his grandsire and his parent pass away 
from this world: the village-memory records their 
worth, and their rustic tear hallows their resting-place. 
After all, when life's mockeries shall vanish from be- 



U6 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

fore us, and the heart that now beats in the proudesi 
bosom here, shall moulder unconscious beneath its 
kindred clay, art cannot erect a nobler monument, or 
genius compose a purer panegyric. Such, gentlemen, 
was almost the only inheritance with which my client 
entered the world. He did ROt disgrace it; his youth, 
his manhood, his age up to this moment, have passed 
without a blemish; and he now stands confessedly the 
head of the little village in which he lives. About five- 
and-twenty years ago he married the sister of a highly 
respectable Roman Catholic clergyman, by whom he 
had a family of seven children, whom they educated in 
the principles of morality and religion, and who, until 
the defendant's interference, were the pride of their 
humble home, and the charm or the consolation of its 
vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing 
parents felt their youth renewed, their age made 
happy ; the days of labour became holidays in their 
smile ; and if the hand of affliction pressed on them, 
they looked* upon their little ones, and their mourning 
ended. I cannot paint the glorious host of feelings; the 
joy, the love, the hope, the pride, the blended para- 
dise of rich emotions with which the God of nature 
fills the father's heart when he beholds his child in all 
its filial loveliness, when the vision of his infancy rises 
as it were reanimate before him, and a divine vanity 
exaggerates every trifle into some mysterious omen, 
which shall smooth his aged wrinkles, and make his 
grave a monument of honour! /cannot describe them; 
but, if there be a parent on the jury, he will compre- 
hend me. It is stated to me, that of all his children 
there were none more likely to excite such feelingvS in 



CANNAGHTON V. DILLON. 137 

lie plaintiff than the unfortunate subjeet of the present 
action: she was his favourite daughter, and she did not 
shame his preference. You shall find most satisfactorily, 
that she was without stain or imputation; an aid and a 
blessing" to her parents, and an example to her younger 
sisters, who looked up to her for instruction. She took 
a pleasure in assisting in the industry of their home; 
and it was at a neighbouring market, where she went 
to dispose of the little produce of that industry, that 
she unhappily attracted the notice of the defendant. 
Indeed, such a situation was not without its interest,— a 
young, female, in the bloom of her attractions, exerting 
htv faculties in a parent's service, is an object lovely in 
the eye of God, and, one would suppose, estimable in 
the eye of mankind. Far different, however, were the 
sensations which she excited in the defendant. He saw 
jier arrayed, as he confesses, in charms that enchanted 
him; but her youth, her beauty, the smile of her inno- 
cence, and the piety of her toil, but inflamed a brutal 
and licentious lust, that should have blushed itself away 
in such a presence. What cared he for the conscnuences 
of his gratification.'' — There was 

*' No honour, no relenting ruth. 

To paint the parents fondling o'er their child. 
Then show tlie rain'd maid, and her distraction 

wild !" 

What thought he of the home he was to desolate? 
What thought he of the happiness he was to plunder? 
His sensual rapine paused not to contemplate the speak- 
ing picture of the cottage-ruin, the bhghted hope^ the 

M2 



138 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

broken heart, the parent's agony, and, last and most 
withering in the wofiil group, the wretched victim her< 
self starving on the sin of a promiscuous prostitution* 
and at length perhaps, with her own hand, anticipating 
the more tedious murder of its diseases! He need not,, 
if I am instructed rightly, have tortured his fancy for thei! 
miserable consequences of hope bereft, and expectation 
plundered. Through no very distant vista, he might 
have seen the form of deserted loveliness weeping over 
the worthlessness of his worldly expiation, and warning 
him, that as there were cruelties no repentance could 
atone, so there were sufferings neither wealth, nor 
lime, nor absence, could alleviate.* If his memory 
should fail him, if he should deny the picture, no man 
can tell him half so efficiently as the venerable ad- 
vocate he has so judiciously selected, that a case might 
arise, where, though the energy of native virtue should 
defy the spoliation of the person, still crushed affection 
might leave an infliction on the mind, perhaps less 
deadly, but certainly not less indelible. I turn from this 
subject with an indignation which tortures me into 
brevity; I turn to the agents by which this contamina- 
tion was effected. 

I almost blush to name them, yet they were worthy 

* Mr. PHTLtiPs here alluded to a verdict of 50001. 
obtained at the late Galway Assizes against the defend- 
ant, at the suit of Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and 
interesting young lady, for a breach of promise of 
marriage. Mr. Whitestone, who now pleaded for Mr. 
Dillon, was Miss Wilson's advocate against him on the 
occasion alluded to. 



i 



CONNAGllTON V. DILLON". 139 

of their vocation. They were no other than a menial 
servant of Mr. Dillon; and a base, abandoned, profli- 
gate ruffian, a brother-in-law of the devoted victim 
herself, whose beastial appetites he bribed into sub- 
serviency! It does not seem as if by such a selection he 
was determined to degrade the dignity of the master, 
while he violated the finer impulses of the man, by not 
merely associating with his own servant, but by di- 
verting the purest streams of social affinity into the 
vitiated sewer of his enjoyment. Seduced by such in- 
struments into a low public-house at Athlone, this un- 
happy girl heard, without suspicion, their mercenary 
panegyric of the defendant, when, to her amazement, 
but no doubt, according to their previous arrangement, 
he entered and joined their company. J do confess to 
you, Gentlemen, when I first perused this passage in 
my brief, I flung it from me with a contemptuous in- 
credulity. What! I exclaimed, as no doubt you are all 
ready to exclaim, can this be possible.'' Is it thus I am 
to find the educated youth of Ireland occupied? Is this 
the employment of the miserable aristocracy that yet 
lingers in this devoted country? Am I to find them, not 
in the pursuit of useful science, not in the encourage- 
ment of arts or agriculture, not in the relief of an im- 
poverished tenantry, not in the proud march of an un- 
successful but not less sacred patriotism, not in the 
bright page of warlike immortality, dashing its iron 
crown from guilty greatness, or feeding freedom's 
laurel with the blood of the despot! — but am I to find 
them, amid drunken panders and corrupted slaves, 
debauching the innocence of village life, and even amid 
the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating the 



140 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



1 



materials of the brothel! Gentlemen, I am still un- 
willing to believe it, and, with all the sincerity of Mr. 
Dillon's advocate, I do entreat you to reject it alto- 
gether, if it be not substantiated by the unimpeachable 
corroboration of an oath. As I am instructed, he did 
not, at this^ time, alarm his victim by any direct com- 
munication of his purpose; he saw that "she was good 
as she was fair," and that a premature disclosure would 
but alarm her virtue into an impossibility of violation. 
His satellites, however, acted to admiration. They 
produced some trifle which he had left for her dis- 
posal; they declared he had long felt for her a sincere 
attachment;' as a proof that it was pure, they urged the 
modesty with which, at a first interview, elevated above 
her as he was, he avoided its disclosure. When she 
pressed the madness of the expectation which could 
alone induce her to consent to his addresses, they as- 
sured her that though in the first instance such an event 
was impossible, still in time it was far from being im- 
probable; that many men from such motives forgot alto- 
gether the difference of station, that Mr. Dillon's own 
family had already proved every obstacle might yield 
to an all-powerful passion, and induce him to make her 
his wife, who had reposed an affectionate credulity on 
his honour! Such were the subtle artifices to which he 
stooped. Do not imagine, however, that she yielded 
immediately and imphci'tly to their persuasions; I should 
scarcely wonder if she did. Every day shows us the 
rich, the powerful, and the educated, bowing before the 
spell of ambition, or avarice, or passion, to the sacrifice 
of their honour, their country, and their souls; what j 
wonder, then, if a poor, igndtant, peasant girl had at 



eONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 141 

once sunk before the united potency of such temptations! 
But she did not. Many and many a time the truths which 
had been inculcated by her adoring parents rose up in 
arms; and it was not until various interviews, and re- 
peated artifices, and untiring efforts, that she yielded 
her faith, her fame, and her fortunes, to the disposal of 
her seducer. Alas, alas! how little did she suppose that 
a moment was to come when, every hope denounced, 
and every expectation dashed, he was to fling her for 
a very subsistence on the charity or the crimes of the 
world she had renounced for him! How little did she 
reflect that in her humble station, unsoiled and sinless, 
she might look down upon the elevation to which vice 
would raise herl Yes, even were it a throne, I say she 
might look down on it. There is not on this earth a 
lovelier vision; there is not for the skies a more angelid 
candidate than a young, modest maiden, robed in chas« 
tity; no matter what its habitation, whether it be the 
palace or the hut: — 

" So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, 

That when a soul is found sincerely so, 

A thousand liveried angels lackey her. 

Driving far off* each thing of sin and guilt. 

And in clear dream and solemn vision 

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear. 

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 

Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, 

The unpolluted temple of the mind, 

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence. 

Till all be made immortal!"-— 



U2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



1 

:scribe^ 



Such is the supreme- power of chastity, as descri 
by one of our divinest bards, and the pleasure which I 
feel in the recitation of such a passage is not a little en- 
hanced, by the^pride that few countries more fully af- 
ford its exemplification than our own. Let foreign envy 
decry us as it will, Chastity is the iifSTiNCT of the 
Irish Female: the pride' of her talents, the power of 
her beauty, the splendour of her accomplishments, are 
but so many handmaids of this vestal virtue; it adorns 
her in the court, it ennobles her in the cottage; whe- 
ther she basks in prosperity or pines in sorrow, it 
clings about her like the diamond of the morning on 
the mountain floweret, trembhng even in the ray that 
once exhibits and inhales it ! Rare in our land is the 
absence of this virtue. Thanks to the modesty that 
venerates; thanks to the manliness that brands and 
avenges its violation. You have seen that it was by no 
common temptations even this humble villager yielded 
to seduction. 

I now come, Gentlemen, to another fact in the pro- 
gress of this transaction, betraying in my mind, as base 
a premeditation, and as low and as deliberate a decep- 
tion as I ever heard of. While this wretched creature 
was in a kind of counterpoise between her fear and her 
affection, struggling as well as she could between pas- 
sion inflamed and virtue unextinguished, Mr. Dillon, 
ardently avowing that such an event as separation was 
impossible, ardently avowing an eternal attachment, 
insisted upon perfecting an article which should place 
her above the reach of contingencies. Gentlemen, you 
shall see this document voluntarily executed by an 
educated and estated gentleman of your country. 5 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON". 143 

know not how you will feci, but for my part I protest 
i\am in a suspense of admiration between the virtue of 
the proposal and the magnificent prodigality of the 
provision. Listen to the article: it is all in his own hand 
writing: — '*I promise," says he, **to give Mary Con- 
naghton the sum of ten pounds sterling per annum, 
when t part with her; but if she, the said Mary, should 
at any time hereafter conduct herself improperly or 
(mark this. Gentlemen) has done so before the draviiug 
cf this article^ \ am not bound to pay the sum of ten 
pounds, and this article becomes null and void as if the 
same was never executed. John Dillon." There, Gen- 
tlemen, there is the notable and dignified document 
for you! take it into your Jury box, for I know not 
how to comment on it. Oh, yes, I have heard of am- 
bition urging men to crime— I have heard of love in- 
flaming even to madness — I have read of passion rush- 
ing over law and religion to enjoyment; but never, 
until this, did I see a frozen avarice chilling the hot 
; pulse of sensuality; and desire pause, before its brutish 
draught, that it might add deceit to desolation! I need 
not tell you that having provided in the very execu- 
tion of this article for its predetermined infringement; 
that knowing, as he must, any stipulation for the pur- 
I chase of vice to be invalid by our law; that having in 
I the body of this article inserted a provision against 
j that previous pollution which his prudent caprice 
I might invent hereafter, but which his own conscience, 
I her universal character, and even his own desire for 
j her possession, all assured him did not exist at the 
time, I need not telPyou that he now urges the inva- 
lidity of that instrument; that he now presses that pre- 



144 SPEECH m THE CASE OF 

vioiis pollution; that he refuses from his splendid in 
come the pittance of ten pounds to the wretch he has^ j 
ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath the 
reproaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a living 
death in the charnel houses of prostitution! You see. 
Gentlemen, to what designs hke these may lead a man. 
I have no doubt, if Mr. Dillon had given his heart fair 
play, had let his own nature gain a moment's ascen- 
dency, he would not have acted so; but there is some- 
thing in guilt which infatuates its votaries forward; it 
may begin with a promise broken, it will end with the 
home depopulated. But there is something in a se- 
ducer of peculiar turpitude. I know of no character so 
vile, so detestable. He is the vilest of robbers, for he 
plunders happiness; the worst of murderers, for he 
murders innocence; his appetites are of the brute, his 
arts of the demon; the heart of the child ;ind the corse 
of the parent are the foundations of the altar which he 
rears to a lust, whose fires are the fires of hell, and 
whose incense is the agony of virtue! I hope Mr. Dil- 
lon's advocate may prove that he does not deserve to 
rank in such a class as this; but if he does I hope the 
infatuation inseparably connected with such proceed- 
ings may tempt him to deceive you through the same 
plea by which he has defrauded his miserable dupe. 

I dare him to attempt the defamation of a character, 
which, before his cruelties, never was even suspected. 
Happily, Gentlemen, happily for herself, this wretched 
creature, thus cast upon the world, appealed to the pa- 
rental refuge she had forfeited. I need not describe to 
you the parent's anguish at the heart-rending disco- 
very. God help the poor man when misfortune comes- 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 145 

upon him! How few are his resources! how distant his 
consolation! You must not forget, Gentlemen, that it 
is not the unfortunate victim herself who appeals to 
you for compensation. Her crimes, poor Wretch, have 
outlawed her from retribution, and, however the 
temptations by which her erring nature was seduced, 
may procure an andience from the ear of mercy, the 
stern morality of earthly law refuses their interference. 
No, no; it is the wretched parent who comes this day 
before you — ^his aged locks withered by misfortune, and 
his heart broken by crimes of which he was unconscious. 
He resorts to this tribunal, in the language of the law, 
claiming the value of his daughter's servitude; but let 
it not be thought that it is for her mere manuallabours 
he sohcits compensation. No, you are to compensate 
him for ail he has suffered, for all he has to suffer, for 
' feehngs outraged, for gratifications plundered, for 
honest pride put to the blush, for the exiled endear- 
ments of his once happy home, for all those innumera- 
ble and instinctive ecstacies with which a virti^pus 
daughter fills her father's heart, for which language is 
too poor to have a name, but of which nature is abun- 
dantly and richly eloquent ! Do not suppose I am en- 
deavouring to influence you by the power of declama- 
tion. I am laying down to you the British law, as 
liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak 
the language of the English Lord Eldon, a judge of 
great experience and greater learning — (Mr. Phillips 
here cited several cases as decided by Lord Eldon.) — 
Such, Gentlemen, is the language of Lord Eldon. I 
speak also on the authority of our own Lord Avonmore, 
a judge who illuminated the bench by his genius, en- 
N 



HS ^SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

deared it by his suavity, and dignified it by his boltl 
uncoDipromising probity; one of those rare men, who 
hid the thorns of law beneath the brightest flowers of 
literature, and, as it were, with the wand of an en- 
chanter, changed a wilderness into a garden! I speak 
upon that high authority — but I speak on other autho- 
rity paramount to all!— on the authority of nature 
rising up within the heart of man, and calling for ven- 
geance upon such an outrage. God forbid, that in a 
case of this kind we were to grope our way through the 
ruins of antiquity, and blunder over statutes, and burrow 
through black letter in search of an interpretation 
which Providence has ^engraved in living letters ou 
every human heart. Yes; if there be one amongst you 
blessed with a daughter, the smile of whose infancy 
still cheers your njemory, and the promise of whose 
youth illuminates your hope, who has endeared the 
toils of your manliood, whom you look up to as the 
solace of your declining years, whose embrace allevia- 
ted the pang of separation, whose growing welcome 
hailed your oft anticipated return — oh, if there be one 
amongst you, to whom those recollections are dear, to 
whom those hopes are precious — let him only fancy 
that daughter torn from his caresses by a seducer's 
arts, and cast upon tlie world, robbed of her inno- 
cence, — and then let him ask his henvty'^ ivhat money 
could reprise himP* 

The defendant. Gentlemen, cannot complain that I 
put it thus to you. If, in place of seducing, he had as- 
saulted this poor girl— if he had attempted by force 
what lie has achieved by fraud, his life would bave been 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 147 

tlie forfeit; and yet how trifling* in comparison would 
have been the parent's ag'ony! He has no riglil, then, 
to complain, if you should estimate this outrage at the 
price of his very existence! I am lokl, indeed, this gen- 
tleman entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in the 
age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it svub; barbarous, that 
the poor are only a species of property, to be treated 
according to interest or caprice; and that wealth is at 
once a patent for crime, and an exemption from its 
consequences. Happily for this land; the day of such 
opinions has passed over it— the eye of a purer feeling 
and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but 
as one of the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed 
poverty only an additional stimulus to increased pro- 
tection. A generous heart cannot help feeling, that in 
cases of this kind the poverty of the injured is a dread* 
ful aggravation. If the rich suffer, they have much to 
console them; but when a poor man loses the darling of 
his heart — the sole pleasure with which nature blessed 
him — how abject, how cureless is the despair of his 
destitution! Believe me, Gentlemen, you have not only 
a solemn duty to perform, but you have an awful re- 
sponsibility imposed ijpon you. You are this day, in 
some degree, trustees for the morality of the people — 
perhaps of the whole nation; for, depend npon it, if the 
sluices of immorality are once opened among the lower 
orders, the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all 
that is dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the ha- 
bitations of the highest. I feel. Gentlemen, I have dis- 
charged Tny duty— I am sure you will do j>our^s. 1 re- 
pose my client with confidence in your hands; and most 



148 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

fervently do I hope, that when evening shall find you at 
your happy fire-side, surrounded hy the sacred circle 
of yonr children, you may not feel the heavy curse 
gnawing at your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, 
the prowler that may devour them« 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR- PHILLIPS 

TN THE CASE OF CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. 
DELIVERED IN 
THE COURT OFCOMMOJV PLEAS, DUBLIN. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 

I AM with my learned brethren counsel for the plain- 
tiff. My friend Mr. Curran has told you tlie nature of 
the action. It has fallen to my lot to state more at large 
to you the aggression by which it lias been occasioned. 
Believe me it is wiyn no paltry affectation of under- 
valuing my very humble powers that I wish he had 
selected some more experienced, or at least less 
credulous advocate. I feel I cannot do my duty; I am 
not fit to address you, I have incapaciated myself; I 
know not whether any of the calumnies which have so 
industriously anticipated this trial, have reached your 
ears; but I do confess they did so wound and poison 
mine, that to satisfy my doubts I visited the house of 
misery and mourning, and the scene which set scepti- 
s'lsm at rest, has set description at defiance. Had I not 
N2 



150 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

yielded to those interested misrepresentations, I might 
from my brief have sketched the tact, and from my 
fancy drawn the consequences; but as it is, reality 
rushes before my frightened memory, and silences the 
tongue and mocks the imagination. Believe me. Gentle- 
men, you are impanneled there upon no ordinary oc- 
casion; nominally, indeed, you are to repair a private 
wrong, and it is a wrong as deadly as human wicked- 
ness can inflict — as human weakness can endure; a 
wrong which annihilates the hope of the parent and the 
happiness of the child; which in one moment blights the 
fondest anticipations of the heart, and darkens the 
social hearth, and worse than depopulates the habita- 
tions of the happy! But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this 
is far from your exclusive duty. You are to do much 
more. You are to say whether an example of such 
transcendalU turpitude is to stalk forth for public imita- 
tion — whether national morals are to have the law for 
their protection, or imported crime is to feed upon im- 
punity — whether chastity and religion are still to be 
permitted to Hnger in this province, or it is to become 
one loatlisome den of legalized prostitution — whether 
the sacred volume of the Gospel, and the venerable 
statutes of the law are still to be respected, or con- 
verted into a pedestal on which the mob and the mili- 
ttry are to erect the idol of a drunken adoration. 
Gentlemen, these are the questions you are to try; hear 
the facts on which your decision must be founded. 

It is now about five-and-twenty years since the 
plaintiff, Mr. Creighton, commenced business as a slate 
merchant in the city of Dublin. His vocation was hum- 
ble, it is true, but it was nevertl^eless honest; and 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 151 

Ihoug'li, unlike his opponent, the heights of ambition 
lay not before him, the path of respectability did — he 
approved himself a good man and a respectable citi- 
zen. Arrived at the age of manhood, he sought not the 
gratification of its natural desires by adultery or seduc- 
tion. For him the home of honesty was sacred ; for 
him the poor man's child was unassailed; no domestic 
desolation mourned his enjoyment; no anniversary of 
wo commemorated his achievments; from his own 
sphere of life naturally and honourably he selected a 
companion, whose beauty blessed his bed, and whose 
virtues consecrated his dwelling. Eleven lovely child- 
ren blessed their union, the darUngs of their heart, the 
delight of their evenings, and as they blindly anticipa- 
ted, the prop and solace of their approaching age. Oh! 
SACRED WEDDED LOVE ! how dear! how dehghtful ! how 
divine are thy enjoyments! Contentment crowns thy 
board, affection glads thy fireside; passion, chaste but 
ardent, modest but intense, sighs o'er thy couch, the 
atmosphere of paradise! Surely, surely, if this conse- 
crated rite can acquire from circumstances a factitious 
interest, 'tis when we see it cheering the poor man's 
home, or shedding over the dwelHng of misfortune the 
light of its warm and lovely consolation. Unhappily, 
i Gentlemen, it has that interest here. That capricious 
I power which often dignifies the worthless hypocrite, 
I as often wounds the industrious and the honest. The 
I late ruinous contest, having in its career confounded 
all the proportions of society, and with its last gasp 
^ sighed famine and misfortune on the world, has cast 
; my industrious client, with too many of his compa- 
j nions, from competency to penury. AUs, alas, to him 



132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

it left worse of its satellites behind it; it }eft the in- 
vader even of his misery — the seducer of his sacred 
and unspotted innocence. Mysterious Providence! was 
it not enoug-h that sorrow robed the happy home in 
mourning — was it not enough that disappointment 
preyed upon its loveliest prospects — was it not enough 
that its little inmates cried in vain for bread, and heard 
no answer but the poor father's sigh, and drank no 
sustenance but the wretched mother's tears? Was this 
a time for passion, lawless, conscienceless, licentious 
passion, with its eye of lust, its heart of stone, its hand 
of rapine, to rush into th6 mournful sanctuary of mis- 
fortune, casting crime into the cup of wo, and rob the 
parents of their last wealth, their child, and rob the 
child of her only charm, her innocence! ! That this 
has been done I am instructed we shall prove: what 
requital it deserves. Gentlemen, you must prove to 
mankind. 

The defendant's name I understand is Townsend. 
He is of an age when every generous blossom of the 
spring should breathe an infant freshness round his 
heart; of a family which should inspire not only high 
but hereditary j^rinciples of honour; of a profession 
whose very essence is a stainless chivalry, and whose 
Jjought and bounden duty is the protection of the citizen. 
Such are the advantages with which he appears before 
you — fearful advantages, because they repel all possible 
suspicion; but you will agree with me, most damning 
adversaries, if it shall appear that the generous ardour 
of his youth was chilled — that the noble inspiration of 
hi^ birth was spurned-— that the lofty impulse of his 
profession was despised — and thatallthat could grace. 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 153 

or animate, or ennoble, was used to his own discredit 
and his fellow-creature's misery. 

It was upon the first of June last that on the banks of 
the canal, near Portobello, Lieutenant Townsend first 
met the daughter of Mr. Creighton, a pretty interesting 
girl, scarcely sixteen years of age. She was accompa- 
nied by her little sister, only four years old, with whom 
she was permitted to take a daily walk in tliat retired 
spot, the vicinity of her residence. The defendant was 
attracted by her appearance — he left his party, and 
attempted to converse with her; she repelled his ad- 
vances — he immediately seized her inflmt sister by the 
hand, whom he held as a kind of hostage for an intro- 
duction to his victim. A prepossessing appearance, a 
modesty of deportment apparently quite incompatible 
with any evil design, gradually silencedher alarm, and 
she answered the common-place questions with which, 
on her way home, he addressed to her. Gentlemen, I 
admit it was an innocent imprudence; the rigid rules of 
matured morahty should have repelled such communi. 
cation; yet perhaps, judging even by that strict standard, 
you will rather condemn the familiarity of the intrusion 
in a designing adult than the facihty of access in a crea- 
ture of her age and her iniwcence. They thus sepa- 
rated, as she naturally supposed, to meet no more. Not 
such, however, was the determination of her destroyer. 
From that hour until her ruin, he scarcely ever lost 
sight of her — he followed her as a shadow — he way -laid 
her in her walks — he interrupted her in her avocations 
■ — he haunted the street of her residence; if she re- 
fused to meet him, he paraded before her window at 
the hazard of exposing her first comparatively innocent 



154 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

imprudence to her unconscious parents. How happy^ 
would it have been had she conquered the timidity so 
natural to her age, and appealed at once to their pardon 
and their protection! Gentlemen, this daily persecution 
continued for three months — for three successive 
months, by every art, by every persuasion, by every 
appeal to her vanity and her passions, did he toil for the 
destruction of this unfortunate young creature. I leave 
you to guess how many during that interval might have 
yielded to the blandishments of manner, the fascinations 
of youth, the rarely resisted temptations of opportunity. 
For three long months she did resist them. She would 
have resisted them for ever but for an expedient which 
is without a model — but for an exploit which I trust in 
God will be without an imitation. Oh, yes he might 
returned to his country, and did he but reflect, he 
would rather have rejeiced at the virtuous triumph of 
his victim, than mourned his own soul-redeeming defeat; 
he might have returned to his country, and told the 
cold-blooded libellers of this land that their specula, 
tions upon Irish chastity were prejudiced and proofless; 
that iw the vireck of all else we had retained our honour; 
that though the national luminary had descended for a 
season, the streaks of its loveliness still lingered on 
your horizon; that the nurse of that, genius which 
abroad had redeemed the name, and dignified the na- 
ture of man, was to be found at home in the spirit with- 
out a stain, and the purity without a suspicion. He 
might have told them truly that this did not result, as 
they would intimate, from the absence of passion or 
t\\e want of civihzation; that it was the combined con- 
sequence of education, of example, and of impulse! 



f 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEED. 135 



and that, though in all the revelry of enjoyment, the 
fair flowret of the Irish soil exhaled its fragrance and 
expanded its charms in the chaste and blessed beams 
of a virtuous affection, still it shrunk with an instinc- 
tive sensitiveness from'the gross pollution of an uncon- 
secrated contract. 

Gentlemen, the common artifices of the seducer 
failed; the syren tones with which sensuality awakens 
appetite and lulls purity had wasted themselves in air, 
and the intended victim, deaf to their fascination, mov^d 
along safe and untransformed. He soon saw, that young 
as she was, the vulgar expedients of vice were inef- 
fectual; that the attractions of a glittering exterior 
failed; and that before she could be tempted to her 
sensual damnation, his tongue mu^t learn, if not the 
words of wisdom, at least the speciousness of affected 
purity. He pretended an affection as virtuous as it was 
violent; he called God to witness the sincerity of his 
declarations; by all the vows which should forever 
rivet the honourable, and could not fail to convince 
even the incredulous, he promised her marriage; over , 
and over again he invoked the eternal denunciation if 
he was perfidious. To her acknowledged want of for- 
tune, his constant reply was, that he had an indepen- 
dence; that all he wanted was beauty and virtue; that 
he saw she had the one, that had proved she had the 
other. When she pleaded the obvious disparity of her 
birth, he answered, that he was himself only the son 
of an English farmer; that happiness was not the mo- 
nopoly of rank or riches; that his parents would receive 
lier aJj the child of their adoption; that he would cher- 
ish her as the charm of his existence. Specious as it 



136 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

was, even this did not succeed; she determined to 
await its avowal to those who had given her life, and 
who hoped to have made it immaculate by the educa- 
tion they had bestowed and the example they had af- 
forded. Some days after this he met her in her walks, 
for she could not pass her paternal threshold without 
being intercepted. He asked where she was going, — 
she said, a friend knowing her fondness for books had 
promised her the loan of some, and she was going to 
receive them. He told her he had abundance, that they 
were just at his home, that he hoped after what had 
passed she would feel no impropriety in accepting 
them. She was persuaded to accompany him. Arriyed, 
however, at the door of his lodgings, she positively re- 
fused to go any farther; all his former artifices wei^e 
redoubled; he called God to witness he considered 
her as his wife, and her character as dear to him as 
that of one of his sisters; he affected mortification at 
any suspicion of his purity; he told her if she refused 
her confidence to his honourable affection, the little 
iufknt who accompanied her was an inviolate guarantee 
for her protection. 

Gentlemen, this wretched child did suffer her cre- 
dulity to repose on his professions. Her theory taught 
her to respect the honour of a soldier; her love re- 
pelled the imputation that debased its object; and her 
youthful innocence rendered her as incredulous as she 
was unconscious of criminality. At first his behaviour 
corresponded with his professions; he welcomed her 
to the home of which he hoped she would soon be* 
come the inseparable companion; he painted the future 
joys of their domestic felicity, and dwelt with peculiar 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 157 

complacency on some heraldic ornament which hung 
over his chimney-piece, and which, he said, was the 
armorial ensign of his family! Oh! my Lord, how well 
would it have been had he but retraced the fountai;i 
of that document; had he recalled to mind the virtues 
it rewarded, the pure train of honours it associated, the 
line of spotless ancestry it distinguished, the liigh am- 
bition its bequest inspired, the moral imitation it im- 
peratively commanded ! But when guilt once kindles 
within the human heart, all that is noble in our nature 
becomes, parched and arid; the blush of modesty fades 
before its glare, the sighs of virtue fan its lurid flame, 
and every divine essence of our being but swells -and 
exasperates its infernal conflagration. 

Gentlemen, I will not disgust this audience; I will 
not debase myself by any description of the scene that 
followed; I will not detail the arts, the excileraents, 
the promises, the pledges with which deliberate lust 
inflamed the pjASsions, and finally overpowered the 
struggles of innocence and of youtii. It is too much to 
know that tears could not appease — that misery could 
Tiot afFect—that the presence and the prayers of an 
infant could not awe him; and that the vvretclied vic- 
tim, between the , ardour of passion and the repose of 
love, sunk at length, inflamed, exhausted, and confid- 
ing, beneath the heartless grasp ox an unsympalhizing 
sensuality. * 

The appetite of the hour thus satiated, at a tempo- 
ral, perhaps an eternal hazard, he dismissed the sisters 
to their unconscio\is parents, not, however, without 
extorting a promise, that on the e issuing night Miss 
reighton would desert her home for ever for the arms 
O 



158 , SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

of a fond, affectionate, and faithful husband. Faith- 
ful, alas! but only to his appetites, he did seduce her 
from that " sacred home,'' to deeper guilt, to more 
deliberate cruelty. 

After a suspense comparatively happy, her parents 
became acquainted with her irrevocable ruin. The 
miserable mother, supported by the mere strength of 
desperation, rushed half phrenzied to the castle, where 
Mr. Townsend was on duty. "Give me back my 
child!" was all she could articulate. The parental ruin 
struck the spoiler almost speechless. The dreadful 
wcft'ds, ^^'1 have your child,'^'' withered her heart up with 
the horrid joy that death denied its mercy, that her 
daughter lived, but lived, alas, to infamy. She could 
neither speak nor hear; she sunk down convulsed and 
powerless. As soon as she could recover to any thing 
of eflTort, naturally did she turn to the residence of Mr. 
Townsend; his orders had anticipated her— the sentinel 
refused her entrance'. She told her sad narration, she 
implored his pity; with the eloquence ofgrief she asked" 
him, had he home, or ivife, or children. "Oh, Holy 
Nature! thou didst not plead in vain!" even the rude 
soldier's heart relented. He admitted her by stealth, 
and she once more held within her arms the darling 
hope of many an anxious hour: duped, desolate, de- 
graded it was true— but still — but still '\her child,''' 
Gentlemen, if the parental heart cannot suppose what 
followed, how little adequate am I to paint it. Home 
this wretched creatui*e could not return; a seducer's 
mandate, and a father's anger equally forbade it. But 
she gave whatever consolation she was capable; she told 
the fatal tale of her undoing— the hopes, the promises 



CKEIGHI'ON V. TOWNSEND. 159 

$ 

the studied specious arts that had seduced her; and 
with a desperate credulity still watched the light that, 
glimmering" in the distant vista of her love, mocked her 
with hope, and was to leave her to the tempest. To all 
the prophecies of maternal anguish, she would still 
reply, "Oh, no— in the eye of Heaven he is my husband; 
he took me from my home, my happiness, and you, but 
still he pledged to me a soldier's honour — but he 
assured me with a Christian's conscience; for three long 
months 1 heard his vow's of love; he is honourable and 
will not deceive; he is human and cannot desert me." 
Hear, Gentlemen, hear, 1 beseech you, how this inno- 
cent confidence was returned. When her indignant 
father had resorted to Lord Forbes, the commander of 
the forces, and to the noble and learned head of this 
Court, both of whom received him with a sympathy 
that did them honour, Mr. Tovvnsend sent a brother 
officer to inform her she must quit his residence and 
take lodgings. In vain she remonstrated, in vain she 
reminded him of her former purity, and of the promises 
that betrayed it. She was literally turned out at nights 
fall to find whatever refuge the God of the shelterless 
might provide for her. Deserted and disowned, how 
naturally did she turn to the once happy home, whose 
inmates she had disgraced, and whose protection she 
she had forfeited! how naturally did she think the once 
familiar and once welcome avenues looked frowning as 
she passed! how naturally did she linger like a repose- 
less spectre round the memorials of her living happi- 
ness! Her heart failed her; where a parent's smile had 
ever cheered her, sl/e could not face the glance of 
shame, or sorrow, or disdain: She returned to seek her 



160 SPKECH IN^ THE CASE OF 

seducer's pity even till the mornirjg'. Good God! how 
can I disclose it! — the very guard had orders to r| 
her access: even by the rabble soldiery she vvas^ 
into the street, amid the night's dark horrors, the victiiitl 
of her own credulity, the outcast of another's crime, to| 
seal her guilty woes with suicide, or lead a living d eatl| 
amid the tainted sepulchres of a promiscuous pro 
tion! Far, far am I from sorry that it was so. Horl 
beyond thought as is this aggravation, I only hear in i| 
the voice of the Deity in thunder upon the crime. Yesl 
yes; it is the present God arming the vicious agenf 
against the vice, and terrifying from its conception by 
the turpitude to which it may lead. But what aggrava- 
tion does seduction need ! A^ice is its essence, lust its 
end, hypocrisy its instrument, and innocence its victim. 
Must I detail its miseries? Who depopulates the home 
©f virtue, making the child an orphan and the parent 
childless? Who wrests its crutch from the tottering 
helplessness of piteous age? Who wrings its happiness 
from the heart of youth? Who shocks the vision of the 
public eye? Who infects your very thoroughfares with 
disease, disgust, obscenity, and profaneness? Who pol- 
lutes the harmless scenes where modesty resorts for 
mirth, and toil for recreation, with sights that stain tlie 
pure and shock the sensitive? Are these the phrases 
of an interested advocacy? is there one amongst you 
but has v^itnessed their verification ? Is there one 
amongst you so fortunate, or so secluded, as not to 
have wept over the wreck of health, and youth, and 
ioveliness, and talent, the fatal trophies of the sedu- 
cer's triumph — some form, perhaps, where every grace 
xvas squandered, and every beauty paused to waste its 



CUKKjHTON \. TOWNSEND. 161 

bloom, and every beam of mind and tone of melody 
poured their profusion of the public wonder; all that a 
parent's prayer could ask, or a lover's adoration fancy; 
in whom even pollution looked so lovely, that virtue 
would have made her more than human ? Is there an 
epithet too vile for such a spoiler? Is there a punish- 
ment too severe for such depravity? I know not upon 
what complaisance this English seducer may calculate 
from a jury (if this country: I know not, indeed, whether 
he may not think he does your wives and daughters 
some honour by their contamination. But I know well 
what reception he would experience from a jury of his 
own country. 1 know that in such general execration do . 
they view this crime, they think no possible plea a j^al- 
liation! no, not the mature age of the seduced; not her 
previously protracted absence from her parents; not a 
levity approaching almost to absolute guilt; not an in - 
discretion in the mother, that bore every colour of con- 
nivance; and in this opinion they have been supported 
by all the venerable authorities with whom age, in- 
tegrity, and learning have adorned the judgment seat; 
Gentlemen, I come armed with these authorities. In 
the case of TuUidge against Wade; my Lord, it appear- 
ed the person seduced was thirty years of age, and long 
before absent from her home; yet, on a motion to set 
aside the verdict for excessive damages, what was the 
language of Chief Justice Wilmot? "I regret," said 
lie, *' that they were not greater; though the plaintiff's 
loss did not amount to twenty shillings, the jury were 
riglit in giving ample damages, because such actions 
should be encouraged for example's sake." Justice 
ClLve v-ished th^y liad given twice the sum, and in this 
2 



162 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

opinion the whole bench concurred. There was a case 
where the gh-l was of mature ivge, and living apart from 
her parents; here, the victim is almost a child, and was 
never for a moment separated from her home. Again, 
in the case of " Bennet against Alcott," on a similar 
motion, grounded on the apparently overwhelming 
fact, that the mother of the girl had actually sent the 
defendant into her daughter's bed-chamber, where the 
criminality occurred, Justice BuUer declared, "he 
thought tlie parent's indiscretion no excuse for the de- 
fendant's culpability;" and the verdict of 200/. damages 
was conHiined. I'here was a case of hteral connivance; 
here^ will they have the hardihoo.d to hint even its sus- 
picion? You all must remember, Gentlemen, the case 
of our own countryman, Captain Gore, against whom, 
only the other day, an English jury gave a verdict of 
1,500/. damages, though it was proved that the person 
alledged to have been seduced was herself the seducer,| 
going even so fiir as to throw gravel up at the windows 
of the defendant; yet Lord Ellenborough refused to" 
disturb the verdict. Thus you may see 1 rest not on my 
own proofless unsupported dictum. I rely upon grave 
decisions and venerable authorities— not only on the in- 
dignant denunciation of the moment, but on the delibe- 
rate concurrence of the enlightened and the dispassion- 
ate. I see my learned opponent smile. I tell him I would 
not care if the books were an absolute blank upon the 
subject. I would then make the human heart my au- 
thority ! I would appeal to the bosom of every man 
who hears me, whether such a crime^should grow un- 
punished into a precedent; whether innocence should 
•be made the subject of a brutal speculation^ whether 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 163 

the sacred seal of filial obedience, upon which the 
Almighty Parent has affixed his eternal fiat, should be 
violated by a blasphemous and selfish libertinism! 

Gentlemen, if the cases I have quoted, palliated as 
they were, have been humanely marked by ample 
damages, what should you give here where there is 
nothing to excuse — where there is every thing to ag. 
gravate! The seduction was deliberate, it was three 
months in progress, its victim was almost a child, it 
committed under the most alluring promises, it was 
followed by a deed of the most dreadful cruelty; but, 
above all, it was the act of a man commissioned by his 
own country, and paid by this, for the enforcement of 
the laws, and the preservation of society. No man more 
respects than I do the well-earned reputation of the 
British army; 

" It is a school 
Where every principle tending to honour 
Is taught— iffollovjed.''^ 

But in the name of that distinguished army, I here so- 
lemnly appeal against an act, which would blight its 
greenest laurels, and lay its trophies prostrate in the 
dust. Let them war, but be it not on domestic happi- 
ness;let them invade, but be their country's hearths 
inviolable; let them achieve a triumph wherever their 
banners fi}^, but be it not over morals, innocence, and 
virtue. I know not by what palliation the defendant 
means to mitigate this enormity; — will he plead her 
youth? it should have been her protection; — will he 
plead her levity? i deny the fact; but even v/ere it 



\ ■ 

164 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

true, wliat is it to him? what right has any man to 
speculate on the temperature of your wives and yout 
daughters, that he may defile your bed, or desolate 
your habitation? Will he plead poverty? I never knew 
a seducea or an adulterer that did not. He should have 
considered that before. But is poverty an excuse for 
crime? Our law says, he who has not a purse to pay for 
it, must sufter for it in his person. It is a most wise 
declaration; and for my part, 1 never hear such a per- 
son plead poverty, that my first emotion is not a 
thanksgiving, that Providence has denied, at least, the 
instrumentality of wealth to the accomplishment of his 
purposes. Gentlemen, I see you agree with me. 1 waive 
tlie topic; and I again tell you, that if what I know will 
be his chief defence were true, it should avail him 
nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretched 
creature's levity to ruin her, and still less to ruin her 
family. Remember, however. Gentlemen, that even 
had this wretched child been indiscreet, it is not in her 
name we ask for reparation; no, it is in the name of 
the parents her seducer has heart-broken; it is in the 
name of the poor helpless family he has desolated; it 
is in the name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has 
violated; it is in the name of law, virtue, and morality; 
it is in the name of that country whose fair fame 
foreign envy will ma^e responsible for this crime; it 
is in the name of nature's dearest, tenderest sympa- 
thies; it is in the name of all that gives your toil an 
object, and your ease a charm, and your age a hope— 
1 ask from you the value of the poor Tnan's child. 



SPEECH 

IN THE CASE OF BLAKE v. WILKINS: 

DELIVERED IN 
TffE COUJVTY COURTHOUSE, GALWAY. 



May it please your Lordship, * 

The Plaintiff's Counsel, tell me, Gentlemen,pmost 
unexpectedly that they have closed his case, and it 
becomes my duty to state to you that of the defendant. 
The nature of this action you have already heard. It is 
one which, in my mind, ought to be very seldom 
brought, and very sparingly encouraged. It is founded 
on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, and it 
is intended to visit with penal consequences the non- 
observance of an engagement, which is of the most 
paramount importance to society, and which of all 
others, perhaps, ought to be the most unbiassed, — an 
engagement which, if it be voluntary, judicious, and 
disinterested, generally produces the happiest effects; 
but which, if it be either unsuitable or compulsory, 
engenders not only individual misery, but consequences 
universally pernicious. There are fQ\Y contracts be- 
tween human beings which should be more deliberate 
than that of marriage. I admit it should be very cau- 



166 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tlously promised, but, even when proniisec), I am fur 
from conceding that it should invariably be performed; 
a thousand circumstances may form an impediment, 
change of fortune may render it imprudent, change of 
affection may make it culpable. The very party to 
whom the law gives the privilege of complaint has 
perhaps the most reason to be grateful, — grateful that 
its happiness has not been surrendered to caprice; 
grateful that Religion has not constrained an unwilling 
acquiescence, or made an unavoidable desertion doubly 
criminal, grateful that an offspring has not been sacri- 
ficed to the indehcate and ungenerous enforcement; 
grateful that an innocent secret disinclination did not 
too late evince itself in an irresistible and irremediable 
disgust. You will agree with me, however, that if there 
exists any excuse for such an action, it is on the side 
of the female, because every female object being more ■ 
exclusively domestic, such a disappointment is more 
severe in its visitation; because the very circumstance 
concentrating their feehngs renders them naturally 
more sensitive of a wound; because their best trea« 
sure, their reputation may have suffered from the in- 
tercourse; because their chances of reparation are less, 
and their habitual seclusion makes them feel it more; 
because there is something in the desertion of their 
lielplessness which almost immerges the illegality in 
the unmanliness 6f the abandonment. However, if a . 
man seeks to enforce thisengagement, every one feels 
some indelicacy attached to the requisition. I do not 
inquire into the comparative justness of the reasoning, 
but does not every one feel that there appears some 
meanness in forcing a female into an alliance? Is it not 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 16/ 

almost saying", *'I will expose to public shame Ihe crc» 
duUty on which I practised, or you must pay to me the 
monies numbered, the profits of that heartless specu- 
lation; I have gambled with your affections, I have se- 
cured your bond, I will extort the penalty either from 
your purse or your reputation!" I put a case lo you 
where the circumstances are reciprocal, where ag^, 
fortune, situation, are the same, where there is no dis. 
parity of years to make the supposition ludicrous, 
where there is no disparity of fortune to render it sus- 
picious. Let us see whether the present action can be 
so palliated, or whether it does not exhibit a picture 
of fraud and avarice, and meanness and hypocrisy, so 
laughable, that it is almost impossible to criticise it, 
and yet so debasing, that human pride almost forbids 
its ridicule. 

It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate old 
client from the double battery of Love and of Law, 
which at the age of sixty-five has so unexpectedly 
opened on her. Oh, Gentlemen, how vainglorious is 
the boast of beauty! How misapprehended have been the 
charms of youth, if years and wrinkles can thus despoil 
their conquests, and depopulate the navy of its prowess, 
and beguile the bar of its eloquence! How mistaken 
were all the amatory poets from Anacreon downwards, 
who preferred the bloom of the rose and the thrill of 
the nightingale, to the salfron hide and dulcet treble 
of sixty-five ! Even our own svveet bard has had the 
folly to declare, that 

" He once had heard tell of an amorous youth 
Who was caught in his grandmother's bed> 



I 



168 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

But owns he had ne'er such a liquorish tooth. 
As to wish to be there in his stead." 



Royal wisdom has said that we live in a " New Eiia.'^ 
The reign of old 'women has ccnimenced, and if Johanna 
Southcote converts England to her creed, why should 
not Ireland, less pious perhaps, but at least equally pas- 
sionate^, kneel before the shrine of the irresistible 
Widow WiLKiNs. It appears^ Gentlemen, to have been 
her happy fate to have subdued particularly the death- 
dealing professions. Indeed in the love episodes of the 
heathen mythology. Mars and Venus were considered 
as inseparable. I know not whether any of you have 
ever seen a very beautiful print representing the fatal 
glory of Quebec, and the last moments of its immortal 
conqueror — if so, you must have observed the figure 
of the Staff physician, in whose arms the hero is ex- 
piring—that identical personage, my Lord, was the 
happy swain, who, forty or fifty years ago, received 
the reward of his valour and his skill in the virgin hand 
of ony iienerable client! The Doctor lived something 
more than a century, during a great part of which Mrs. 
Wilkins was his companion — ala^, Gentlemen, long as 
he lived, he lived not long enough to behold her 
beauty — 

« That beauty, like the Aloe flower. 
But blossom'd and bloom'd at fourscore." 

He was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath to he: 
the legacies of his patients, when he found he was pre- 
doomed to follow them. To this circumstance, very far 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 169 

he it from me to hint, that Mrs. W. is indebted fbr any 
of her attractions. Rich, however, she undoubtedly was, 
and rich she would still as undoubtedly have continued, 
had it not been for the intercourse with the family of 
the Plaintiff. I do not impute it as a crime to them that 
they happened to be necessitous, but I do impute it as 
both criminal and ungrateful, that after having lived on 
the generosity of their friend, after having literally ex- 
hausted her most prodigal liberality, they should drag 
her infirmities before the |)ublic gaze, vainly supposing 
that they could hide their own contemptible avarice in 
the more prominent exposut'e of her melancholy 
dotage.' The father of the Plaintiff, it cannot be un- 
known to you, was for many years in the most indigent 
situation. Perhaps it is not a matter of concealment 
either, that he found in Mrs. Wilkins a generous bene- 
factress. She assisted and supported him, until at last 
his increasing necessities reduced him to take refuge 
in an act of insolvency. During their intimacy, frequent 
allusion was made to a son whom Mrs. Wilkins had 
never se^n since he was a child, and who had risen to a 
lieutenancy in the navy, under the patronage of their 
relative Sir Betitjamin Bloomfield. In a parent's pane- 
gyric, the gallant lieutenant was of course all that even 
hope could picture. Young, gay, heroic, and disinte- 
rested, the pride of the navy, tiie prop of the country, 
independent as the gale that wafted, and bounteous as 
the wave. that bore him. I am afraid that it is rather an 
anticlimax to tell you after this, that he is the present 
Fhv.ntiff. The eloquence of Mrs. Blake was not ex- 
clusively confined to her encomiums on the lieutenant, 
'^]\c diverged at times into an episode on the matrimo«- 
P 



ITO SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

nial felicities, painted the joy orpassion and delights of ■ 
love, and obscurely hinted that Hymen, with his torchj 
had an exact personification in her son Peter bearing a 
match-light in His Majesty's ship the Hydra! — While 
these contrivances were practising on Mrs. Wilkins, a 
bye plot was got up on board the Hydra, and Mr. Blake 
returned to his mourning country, influenced, as he 
says, by his partiality for the Defendant, but in reality 
compelled by ill health and disappointments, added, 
perhaps, to his mother's very absurd and avaricious 
speculations. What a loss the navy had of him, and 
what a loss he had of the navy! Alas, Gentlemen, he 
could not resist his affection for a female he never 
saw. Almighty love echpsed the glories of ambition — 
Trafiilgar, and St. Vincent flitted from his memory — 
he gave up all for woman, as Mark Antony did before 
him, and, like the Cupid in Hudibras, he 

<f took his stand 

Upon a widow's jointure land— « 
His tender sigh and trickling tear 
Long'd for five hundred pounds a year; 
And languishing desires were fond 
Of Statute, Mortgage, Bill, and Bond!" 

—Oh, Gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes of 
North America! Alike to him the varieties of season 
or the vicissitudes of warfare. One sovereign image 
monopolizes his sensibilities. Does the storm rage? the 
Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. Is the Ocean 
calm? its mirror shows him the lovely Widow Wilkins* 
Is the battle won? he thins his laurels that the Widow 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. iri 

Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Does the broad- 
side thunder? he invokes the Widow Wilkins! 

«* A sweet little Cherub she sits up aloft 
To keep watch for the life of poor Peterl*' 

— Alas, how much he is to be pitied 1 How amply lie 
should be recompensed! Who but must mourn his sub- 
lime, disinterested, sweet-souled patriotism! Who but 
must sympathize with his pure, ardenf, generous afiec* 
tion! — affection too confiding lo require an intervieiv/^^ 
aifection too warm to'ivaJit even for an introduction! In- 
deed, his Amanda herself seemed to think his love was 
most desirable at a distance, for at the very first visit 
after his return, he was refused admittance. His capti- 
.vating charmer was then sick and nurse-tended at her 
brother's house, after a winter's confinement, reflect- 
ing, most likely, rather on her funeral than her wed- 
ding. Mrs. Blake's avarice instantly took the alar ni, and 
she wrote the letter, which I shall now proceed to read 
to you. 

[Mr. Vaxdeleur. — My Lord, unwilling as I am to 
interrupt a statement which seems to create so universal 
a sensation, still I hope your Lordship will restrain Mr, 
Phillips from reading a letter which cannot hereafter 
be read in evidence. 

Mb. O'Connell rose for the purpose of supporting- 
the propriety of the course pursued by the Defendant's 
Counsel, when] 

Mr. Phillips resumed— My Lord, although it is ut- 
terly impossible for the Learned Gentleman to say, in 
'vhat manner hereafter this letter might be made cvi 



172 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

dence, still my case is too strong to require any cavilling 
upon such trifles. I am content to save the public time, 
and waive the perusal of the letter. However, they have 
now given its suppression an importance which per- 
haps its production could not have procured for it. You 
see Gentlemen, what a cas6 they have when they insist 
on the withholding of the documents which originated 
with themselves. I accede to tfieir very polite inter- 
ference, r grant them, since they entreat it, the mercy 
oj my silence. Certain it is, however, that a letter was 
received from Mrs. Blake; and that almost immediately 
aftef its receipt. Miss Blake; intruded herself at Brov/n- 
ville, where Mrs. Wilkins was— remained two days — 
lamented bitterly her not having appeared to the lieu- 
tenant, when he called to visit her — said that her poor 
mother had set her heart on an aUiance — that she was 
sure dear ivom^an^ a disappointment would be the death 
of her; in short, that there was no alternative but the 
tomb or the altar! To all this Mrs. Wilkins only replied, 
how totally ignorant the parties most interested were 
of each other, and that were she even inchned to con- 
nect herself with a stranger (poor old fool!) the debts 
in which her generosity to the family had already in- 
volved her, formed, at least for the present, an insur- 
mountable impediment. This was not sufficient. In 
less than a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake returned 
to the charge, actually armed with an old family-bond 
to pay off the incumbrances, and a renewed represnta- 
tion of the mother's suspense and the brother's despe- 
ration. You will not fail to observe, Gentlemen, that 
while the female conspirators were thus at work, the 
lover huTiself had never seen the object of his, idolatry. 



BLAKE y. WILKINS. i7S 

Like the maniac in the farce, he fell in love with the 
picture of his grandmother. Like a prince of the blood, 
he was willing to woo and to be wedded hy proxy. For 
the gratification of his avarice, he was contented to em- 
brace age, disease, infirmity, and widowhood — to bind 
his youthful passions to the carcase for which the grave 
was opening — to feed by anticipation on the uncold 
corps and cheat the worm of its reversionary corruption. 
Educated in a profession proverbially generous, he 
oifered to barter every joy for money! Born in a coun- 
try ardent to a fault, he advertised his happiness to tlie 
highest bidder! and he now solicits an honourable jury 
to become the panders to this heartless cupidity! Tluis 
beset, harrassed, conspired against, their miserable 
victim entered into the contract you have heard — a 
contract conceived in meanness, extorted by fraud, and 
sought to be enforced by the most profligate con- 
spiracy. Trace it through every stage of its progress, in 
its origin, its means, its effects — from the paren't con» 
triving it through the sacrifice of her son, and forward- 
ing it through the indelicate instrumeululity of her 
daughter, down to the son himself unblushingly ac- 
ceding to the atrocious combination by which age was 
to be betrayed and youth degraded, and the odious 
union of decrepid hist and precocious avarice blasphe- 
mously consecrated by the solemnities of Religion! Is 
this the example which as parents you would sanction? 
Is this the principle you would adopt yourselves? Have 
you never witnessed the misery of an unmatched mar- 
riage? Have you never worshipped the bliss by which 
it has been hallowed, when its torch, kindled at aflfec- 
lion's altar, gives the noon of life its warmth and it3 
V2 



^ 



174 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

lustre, and blesses its evening- with a more chastened, 
but not less lovely illumination? Are you prepared to 
say, that this rite of heaven, revered by each country, 
cherished by eacli sex, the solemqity of every Church 
and the Sacramej^t of one, shall be profaned into tlie 
ceremonial of an obscene and soul-degrading- avarice! 

No sooner was this contract, the device of their co- 
vetousness and the evidence of their shame, swindled 
from the wretched object of this conspiracy, than its 
motive became apparent; they avowed themselves the 
keepers of tlieir melancholy victim; they watched her 
movements; they dictated her actions; they forbade all 
intercourse with her own brother; they duped her inta 
accepting bills, and let her be arrested for the amount. 
They exercised the most cruel antf capricious tyranny 
upon her, now menacing her with the publication of 
lier follies, and now with the still more horrible en- 
forcement of a contract that thus betraj^ed its antici- 
pated inflictions! Can you imagine a more disgusting 
'cxh1bitio.iv£f how weak and how worthless human na- 
ture raa3^m,*than this scene exposes? On the one 
hand, a combination of sex and age, disregarding the . 
most sacred obligations, and trampling on the most 
tender ties, from a mean greediness of lucre, that nei- 
ther honour or gratitude or nature could appease, 
'' Lucri bonus est odor exregiialibet" On the other hand, 
the poor shrivelled relic of what once was health, and 
youth, and animation, sought to be Embraced in its in- 
fection, and caressed in its infirmity — crawled over and 
corrupted by the human reptiles, before death had 
shovelled it to the less odious and more natural ver- 
min of the grave!! What an object for the specula- " 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 175 

.,uas of avarice! What an angel for the idolatry of 
youth! Gentlemen, when this miserable dupe to her 
own doling* vanity and the vice of others, saw how she 
was treated — when slie found herself controlled by 
the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared by the 
father, and held by the son as a kind of windfall, that, 
too rotten to keep its hold, hud fallen at his feet to be 
squeezed and trampled; when she saw the intercourse 
of her relatives prohibited, the most trifling remem- 
brances of her ancient friendship denied, the very ex- 
ercise of her habitual charity denounced; v;lien she 
saw all that sbe was worth was to be surrciidered to a 
family confiscation, and that slie was herself to be gilj- 
bftedin the chains of H.-<:edlock, an example to every su- 
perannuated dotard, upon whose plunder the ravens 
of the world might calculate, she came to the wisest 
determination of her life, and decided th'it licr fortune 
sliould remain at her own disposal. Acting upon this 
decision, she wrote to Mr. Blake, complaining of the 
cruelty with which she had been treated, desiring tite 
restoration of the contract of which she.fi^d beeii 
duped, and declaring, as the only means of securing 
respect, her final determination as to the control over 
her property. To this letter, addressed to the son, a 
verbal answer (mark the conspiracy) was returned from 
the mother, withholding all consent unless the property- 
was settled on her family, but withholding the contract 
atthe same time. The wretched old woman could notsus- 
tainthis conflict. She was taken serioaslyill, confined for 
many months in her brother^s house, from whom she 
was so cruelly sought to be separated, until the debts 
in which she was involved and a recommended change 
of scene transferred her to Dubliti. There she was re- 



176 SPEBCH IN THE CASE OF 

ceived with the utmost kindness by her relative, Mr. 
Mac Namara, to whonn she confided the dehcacy and 
distress of her situation. That gentleman, acting at onee 
as her agent and her friend, instantly repaired to Gal- 
way, where he had an interview with Mr. Blake. This 
was long before the commencement of any action. A 
conversation took place between them on the subject, 
which m*st, in my mind, set the -present action at rest 
altogether; because it must show that the non-perform- 
ance of the contract originated entirely with the plain- 
tiff himself Mr. Mac Namara inquired, whether it was 
not true, that Mr. Blake's own family decUned any 
connexion, unless Mrs. Wilkins consented to settle on 
them the entire of her property? Mr. Blake replied it 
was. Mr. Mac Namara rejoined, that her contract did 
not bind her to any such extent. ** No," replied Blake, 
" I know it does not; however tell Mrs. Wilkins that I 
understand she has about 580/. a year, ajid J ivill he 
content to settle the odd 80/. on ker by way of pocket . 
Qnoney,^^ Here, of co\irse, the conversation ended, 
which Mr. Mac Namara detailed, as he was desired, to 
Mrs. Wilkins, who rejected it with the disdain, which, 
i hope, it will excite in every honourable mind. A topic, 
however, arose during the interview, which unfolds 
the motives and illustrates the mind of Mr. Blake more 
than any observation which 1 can make on it. As one 
of the inducements to the projected marriage, he ac- 
tually proposed the prospect of a 50/. annuity as an of- 
iicer's widow's pension, to which she would be entitled 
in the event of his decease! 1 will^notstop to remark 
on the delicacy of this inducement — I will not dwell 
on the ridicule of the anticipation — I will not advert to 



BLAKE V. WILKI^S. 177 

\\\Q glaring dotage on which he speculated, when he 
could seriously hold out to a woman of her years the 
prospect of such an improbable survivorship. But I do 
ask you, of what materials must the ma^i be composed 
who could thus debase the national liberality! Whajl ! 
was the recompense of that lofty heroism which has 
almost appropriated to the British navy the monopoly 
of maritime renown — was that grateful offering which 
a weeping country pours into the lap of its patriot's 
widow, and into the cradle of its warrior's orphan — 
. was that generous consolation with which a nation's 
gratitude cheers the last moments of her dying hero, 
by tlie portraiture of his children sustained and enno- 
bled by the legacy of his achievements, to be thus de- 
liberately perverted into the bribe of a base, reluctant, 
unnatural prostitution ! Oh ! 1 know of nothing to pa- 
rallel the self-abasement of such a deed,- except the 
audacity that requires an honourable Jury to abet it. 
The following letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. 
Blake's attorney, unfolded the future plans of this un- 
feeling conspiracy. Perhaps the Gentlemen would 
wish also to cushion this document? They do not. 
Then I shall read it. The letter is addressed to Mrs. 
Wilkins. 

" G'fl/wqy, Jan. 9, 1817. 
" Madam, 

•* I have been applied to professionally by Lieu- 
tenant Peter Blnke to take proceedings against you 
on rather an unpleasant occasion; but from every letter 
of your's and other documents, together with the ma- ■ 
terial and irreparable loss Mr. Blake has sustained in 
his professional prospects, by means o^ yonr proposals 



'"'i^pr 



irS SPEEpH IN THE CASE OF 

to him, makes it indispensably necessary for him ti 
get remuneration from you. Under these ci 
stances, I am obliged to say, that I have his dired 
to take immediate proceedings against you, unless h 
is in some measure compensated for your breach ol 
contract and promise to him. I should feel happy that 
you would save me the necessity of acting profession- 
ally by settling the business, [You see. Gentlemen, 
money, money, money, runs through the whole 
amour,] and not suffer it to come to a public investi- 
gation, particularly, as I conceive from the legal ad- 
vice Mr. Blake has got, together with all I have seen, 
it will ultimately terminate most honourably to his ad' 
vantage, and to your pecuniary loss. 

" I have the honour to remain, 
" Madam, 
" Your very humble Servant, 

"Anthony Martin." 



I. 

I 



Indeed, I think Mr. Anthony Martin is mistaken. In- 
deed, I think no twelve men upon their oaths will say 
(even admitting the truth of all he asserts) that it was 
honourable for a British officer to abandon the navy on 
such a speculation — to desert so noble a profession — to 
forfeit the ambition it migTil to have associated — the rank 
to which it leads— tde glory it may confer, for the pur- 
pose of extorting from an old woman he never saw the 
purchase-money of his degradation! But I rescue the 
Plaintiff from this disgraceful imputation. I cannot be- 
lieve that a member of a profession not less remarkable 
for the valouir than the generosity of its spirit—a pro- 
fession as proverbial for its profusion in the harbour as 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 179 

for the prodigality of its life-blood on the wave— a pro- 
fession ever willing to fling money to the winds, and 
only anxious that they should waft .through the world 
its immortal banner crtTusoned ivith the record of a thou- 
sand victories/ No, no, Gentlemen; notwithstanding the 
great authority of Mr. Anthony Martin, I cannot readily 
believe that any man could be found to make the high 
honour of this noble service a base, mercenary, sullen 
pander to the prostitution of his youth! The fact is, that 
increasing ill health, and the improbability of promo- 
tion, combined fo induce his retirement on half pay. 
You will find this confirmed by the date of his resigna- 
tion, which was immediately after the battle of Water- 
loo, which settled (no matter how) the destinies of 
Ertrope. His constitution was declining, his advance- 
ment was annihilated, and, as a forlorn hope, he bom- 
barded the Widow Wilkins! 

" War thoughts had left their places vacant: 

In their room came, thronging, soft and amorous desires; 

All telling him how fair— young Hero was." 

He first. Gentlemen, attacked her fortune luith herself, 
through the artillery of the Church, and having failed 
in that, he now attacks her fortune toithoiit herself 
through the assistance of the law. However, if I am 
instructed rightly, he has nobody but himself to blame 
for his disappointment. Observe, I do not vouch for the 
authenticity of this fact; but I do certainly assure you, 
! that Mrs. Wilkins was persuaded of it. You know the 
1 proverbial frailty of our nature. The gallant Lieutenant 
was not free from It ! Perhaps you imagine that some 



180 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

younger, or according to his taste, some older fair on<: 
weaned him from the widow. Indeed they did not. Ht. 
had no heart to lose, and yet (can you solve the para- 
dox?) his infirmity was lqte. As the Poet says— 

" LOVE STILL LOVE.'' 

No, it was not to Vea-us, it was to Bacchus, he sacri- 
ficed. With an eastern idolatry he commenced at day 
light, and so persevering was his piety till the shades of 
night, that when was not on his knees, he could scarcely 
he said to be on his- legs! When I came to this passage, 
I could not avoid involuntarily exclaiming. Oh, Peter,, 
Peter, whether it be in liquor or in love-— 

*^ None but thyself can be thy parallel !" 

r see by your smiling, Gentlemen, that you correct 
my error. I perceive your classic memories recurring 
to, perhaps, the only prototype to be found in history, 
rbeg his pardon. 1 should not have overlooked 



the immortal Captain Wattle, 



Who was all for love and— a little for the bottle,'^ 

Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to be, 
they do not prefer a fiame that is so exclusively spirit' 
ual. Widow W^ilkins, no doubt, did not choose to be 
singular. In the words of the bard, and, my Lord, I 
perceive you exciise my dwelling so miicli on the au- 
thority of the muses, because really on this occasion 
the minstrel seems to have combined the powers of 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 181- 

poetry with the spirit of prophecy — in the very words 
of the Bard, 

" He asked her, would she marry him — Widow Wil- 
kin s answer'd No^— 

Then said he, I'll to the Ocean rock, I'm ready for 
the slaughter, 

Oh!-*ril shoot at my sad image, as its sighing in tlie 
water — 

Only think of Widow Wilkins, saying — Go Peter- 
Go!" 

But, Gentlemen, let us try to be serious, and seri- 
ously give me leave to ask you, on what grounds does' 
he solicit yoyr verdict? Is it for the loss of his pro- 
fession? Does he deserve compensation if he abandoned 
it for such a purpose — if he deserted at once his duty 
and his country to trepan the weakness of a wealthy 
dotard? But did he (base as the pretence is,) did he dto 
so? Is there nothing to cast any suspicion on the pre- 
text? nothing in the aspect of public affairs? in the uni- 
versal peace? in the uncertainty of being put in com- 
mission? in the downright impossibility of advancement? 
Nothing. to make you suspect that he imputes as a con- 
trivance, what was the manifest result of an accidental 
contingency? Does he claim on the ground oi sacrificed 
affection? Oh, Gentlemen only fancy ivhat he han lost — if 
it were but the blessed raptures of the bridal night! Do 
not suppose I am going to describe it; I shall leave it to 
the Learned Counsel he has selected to compose his 
epithalamium. I shall not exhibit the venerable trembler 
"-at once a relic and a relict; with a grace for every 
Q 



182 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

year and a cupid in every wrinkle — afTecting to shrinle 
from the flame of his impatience, and fanning it with 
the ambrosial sigh of sixty -five!! I cannot paint the 
fierce meridian transports of the honey moon, gradually 
melting into a more chastened and permanent affection 
—every nine months adding a link to the chain of their 
delicate embraces, until, too soon. Death's broadside 
lays the Lieutenant low, consoling^ however, his patri- 
archal charmer (old enough at the time to be the last 
*^{/^ ^f Methu^alem) with a fifty pound annuity, bemg 
the balance of his glory against his Majesiy^s Ship, the 
Hydra ! / 

Give me leave to ask you, is this one of the cases, to 
meet which, this very rare and delicate action was in- 
tended? Is this a case where a reciprocity of circum- 
stances, of affection, or of years, throw even a shade of 
ratignality over the contract? Do not imagine I mean 
to insinuate, that under no circumstances ought such a 
proceeding to be adopted. Do not imagine, though I 
say this action belongs more naturally to a female, its 
adoption can never be justified by one of the other sex. 
Without any great violence to my imagination, I can 
suppose a man in the very spring of life, when his sensi- 
bilities are most acute, and his passions most ardent, 
attaching himself to some object, young, lovely, talent- 
ed, and accomplished, concentrating, as he thought, 
every charm of personal perfection, and in whom those 
charms were only heightened by the modesty that 
veiled them; perhaps his preference was encouraged; 
his affection returned; his very sigh echoed until he was 
conscious of his existence but by, the soul-creating 
sympathy — until the world seemed but the residence 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. ' 183 

of his love, and that love the principle that gave it 
animation — untilj before the smile of her affection, the 
whole spectral train of sorrow vanished, and this world 
of wo, with all its cares and miseries and crimes* 
brightened ashy enchantment into anticipated paradisell 
It might happen that this divine affection might be 
crushed, and that heavenly vision wither into air at the 
hell-engendered pestilence of parental avarice, leaving 
youth and health, and worth and happiness, a sacrifice 
to its unnatural and mercenary caprices. Far Am I from 
saying, that such a case would not call for expiation, 
particularly where the punishment fell upon the very 
vice in which the ruin had originated. Yet even there 
perhaps an honourable mind would rather despise the 
mean, unmerited desertion. Oh, I am sure a sensitive 
mind would rather droop uncomplaining into the grave, 
than solicit the mockery, of a worldly compeRvation ! 
But in the case before you, is there the slightest ground 
for supposing any affection? Do you believe, if any 
accident bereft the Defendant of her fortune, that her 
persecutor would be likely to retain his constancy? Do 
you believe that the marriage thus sought to be en- 
forced, was one likely to promote morality and virtue? 
Do you believe that those delicious fruits by which the 
struggles of social life are sweetened, and the anxieties 
of parental care alleviated, were ever once anticipated? 
Do you think that such an union could exhibit those 
reciprocities of love and endearments by which this 
tender rite should be consecrated and recommended. 
Do you not rather believe that it originated in avarice — 
that it was promoted by conspiracy— and that it would 
?)ot perhaps have lingered through some months of 



184 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

crime, and then terminated in a heartless and disgusting | 
abandonment? 

Gentlemen, these are the questions which you will 
discuss in your Jury-room. I am not afraid of your de- 
cision. Remember I ask you for no mitigation of 
damages. Nothing less than your verdict will satisfy 
me. By that verdict you will sustain the dignity of 
your sex — by that verdict you will uphold the honour 
of the national character — by that verdict you will 
assure, not only the immense multitude of both sexes 
that thus so unusually crowds around you, but the 
whole rising generation of your country, That marriage 

CAN NEVER BE ATTENDED WITH HONOUR OR BLESSED WITH 
HAPPINESS, IF IT HAS NOT ITS ORIGIN IN MUTUAL AFFEC- 
TION. I surrender with confidence ray case to your 
decision. 

[The damages were laid at 5000/. and the Plaintiff's 
Counsel were, in the end, contented to withdraw a 
Juror, and let him pay his own Costs,] 



A, 

CHARACTER 

OF 
NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, 

DOWN TO THE PERIOD OF HIS 

EXILE TO ELBA, 

HE IS fallen! 

We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, 
which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, 
v/hose frown terrified the glance its magnificence at- 
tracted. 

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, 
a sceptred hermit, wrapt iu the solitude of his own 
originality. 

A mind bold, independent, and decisive — a will, des- 
potic in its dictates — an energy that distanced expe- 
dition and a conscience pliable to every ♦touch of 
interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary cha- 
racter—the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the 
annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 

Flung into life, in the midst of a Revolution, that 
quickened every energy of a people who acknow- 
ledged no superior, he commenced his course, a stran- 
ger by birth, and a scholar by charity! 
Q2 



186 CHARACTER OF 

With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but h'lS 
talents, he rushed into the hsts where rank, and wealth, 
and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition 
fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew 
no motive but interest' — ^he acknowledged no criterion 
but success — he worshipped no God but ambition, and 
with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of liis 
idolatryj Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he 
did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not 
promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the 
crescent: for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before 
the Cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the 
adopted child of the Republic: and with a parricidal 
ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the 
tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. 

A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a 
pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and 
in the name of Brutus,* he grasped without remorse, 
and wore without shame, the diadem of the Caesars! 

Through this pantomime of his policy, fortune played 
the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crum- 
bled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest 
theories took the colour of his whim, and all that was 
venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with 
tlie rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed 
the appearance of victory — his flight from Egypt con- 
firmed his destiny — ruin itself only elevated him to 
empire. 

* In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the com- 
mencement of the Revolution, he assumed the name 
of Brutus Proh Pudor! 



NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 187 

But if his fortune was great, his genius was trans- 
cendent; decision flashed upon his councils; and it was 
the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intel- 
lects, his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, 
his plans perfectly impracticable; but in his hands, 
simplicity marked their development, snd success vin- 
dicated their adoption. 

' His person partook the character of his mind — if the 
one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent 
in the field. ) 

Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount-— 
space no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether 
amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he 
seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubi- 
quity! The whole continent of Europe trembled at be- 
holdirfg the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of 
their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of 
his performance; romance assumed the air of history; 
nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too 
fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subal- 
tern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most 
ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became 
common places in his contemplation ; kings were his 
people — nations were his outposts; and he disposed of 
courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and 
cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of tjie 
chess-board ! 

Amid all these changes he stood immutable as ada- 
mant. It mattered little whether in the field or tlie 
drawing room — with the mob or the levee — wearing 
the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown — banishing a 
Braganza, or espousing a Hapsbourgh— dictating peace 



188 CHARACTER OF 

on a raft to the czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat 
at the gallows of Leipsic — he was still the same mili- 
tary despot! 

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the dar- 
ling of the army; and whether in the camp or in the 
cabinet he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. 
Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection 
was useless, and their first stipulation was for the safety 
of their favorite. , 

They knew \^ell that if he was lavish of them, he 
was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them 
to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, 
he subsidized every people; to the people he made 
even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glit- 
tered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with 
the spoils of art, became the miniature metrop(5hs of 
the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affec- 
tation of hterature must not be omitted. The jailor of 
the press, he affected the patronage of letters — the 
proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy — the 
persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, 
he yet pretended to the protection of learning! — the 
assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the de- 
nouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the 
benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to 
the philosopher of England.* 

Such a medley of contradiction's, and at the same 
time such an individual consistency, were never united 

* Sir Humphrey Davy was transmitted the first prize 
of the Academy of Sciences. 




NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE- 189 

lithe sfAine character — A Royalist — A Republican and 
ah Emperor— a Mahometan — a Catholic and a patron 
of* the Synagogue — a Subaltern and a Sovereign — a 
Traitor and a Tyrant — a Christian and an Infidel — -he 
was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impa- 
tient, inflexible original—the same mysterious incom- 
prehensible self— the man without a model, and without 
a shadow. ^ 

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In 
short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, 
and no man can tell how or why he was awakened 
from the reverie'. J 

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleok Buo- 
naparte, the first, (and it is said to be hoped the last) 
Emperor of the French. 

That he lias done much evil there is little doubt; 
that he has been the origin of much good there is just 
as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, 
Portugal, and France have arisen to the blessing of a 
Free Constitution; Superstition has found her grave in 
the ruins of the Inquisition;* and the Feudal system, 
with its whole train of tyrannic satelhtes, has fled for 
r evei^ Kings may learn from him that their safest study, 

* What melancholy reflections does not this sen- 
tence awaken; But three years have elapsed since it 
was written, and in that .short space all the good ef- 
fected by Napoleon has been erased by the Legiti» 
mates, and the most questionable parts of his character 
badly imitated! — His successors want nothing but his 
Genius. 



190 CHARACTER OF 

as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people; 
the people are taught by him that there is no despot- 
ism so stupendous against which they have not a re- 
source; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of 
both, he is a living lesson that if ambition can raise 
them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate 
them from the highest. 



SPEECH 

OF 

. MR. PHILLIPS 

IX THE CASE OF BROWNE u BLAKE: 
FOR CRIM. COJ\r. 

Delivered in dublin, on the 9th july, isir. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 

I AM instructed by the plaintiff to lay his Cv^ise before 
you, and little do 1 wonder at the great interest which 
it seems to have excited. It is one of those cases which 
come home to the "business and the bosoms" of man- 
kind— it is not confined to the individuals concerned — 
it visits every circle from the highest to the lowest— it 
alarms the very heart of the community, and commands 
the whole social family to the spot, where human nature 
prostrated at the bar of public justice calls aJoud for 
pity and protection! On my first addressing a jury upon 
-a subject of this nature, I took the high ground to 
which I deemed myself entitled — I stood upon the 
purity of "the natidnal chacrater — I relied iipcn that 
chastity which centuries had made provr.-l ial., and'al- 
I most drowned the cry of individual suffering in the 



192 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

violated reputation of the country. Humbled and 
abashed, I must resign the topic — indignation at the 
novelty of the offence has given way to horror at the 
frequency of its repetition— it is now becortiing almost 
fashionable umongst us; we are importing the follies, 
and naturalizing the vices of the continent; scarcely a 
term passes in these courts, during which some una- 
bashed adulterer or seducer does not announce him- 
self improving on the odiousness of his offence, by the 
profligacy of his justification, and as it were, struggling 
to record, by crimes, the desolating progress of our 
barbarous civilization. Gentlemen, if this be suffered to 
continue, what home shall be safe, what hearth shall be 
sacred, what parent can, for a moment, calculate on the 
possession of his child, what child shall be secure 
against the orphanage that springs from prostitution; 
what solitary right, whether of life or of liberty, or of 
property in the land, shall survive amongst us, if that 
hallowed couch which modesty has veiled and love 
endeared and religion consecrated, is to be invaded by 
a vulgar and promiscuous libertinism! A time there 
was when that couch was inviolable in Ireland — when [ 
conjugal infidelity was deemed but an invention — wheu 
marriage was considered as a sacrament of the heart and 
faith and affection sent a mingled flame together from 
the altar; are such times to dwindle into a legend of 
tradition! are the dearest rights of man, and the holiest 
ordinances of God, no more to be respected! Is the 
marriage vow to become but the prelude to perjury 
and prostitution! Shall our enjoyments debase them- 
selves into an adulterous participation, and our children 
propagate an incestuous community! Hear the case 



BROWNE V. BLAEE. 193 

which I am fateil to unfold, and then tell me whether a 
single virtue is yet to linger among-st us with impunity 
— whether honour, friendship or hospitality, are to be 
sacred — whether that endearing confidence by which 
the bitterness of this life is sweetened, is to become the 
instrument of a perfidy beyond conception; and whe- 
ther the protection of the roof, the fraternity of the 
board, the obligations of the altar, and the devotion of 
the heart, are to be so many panders to the hellish 
abominations they should have puri%d — Hear the case 
which must go forth to the world, but which 1 trust in 
God your verdict will accompany, to tell that world, 
that if there was vice enough amongst us to commit the 
crime, there is virtue enough to brand it with an in- 
dignant punishment. 

Of the plaintiff, Mr. Browne, it is quite impossible 
but you must have heard much—his misfortune has 
given him sad celebrity, and it does seem a peculiar 
incident to such misfortune that the loss of happiness is^ 
almost invariably succeeded by the deprivation of cha- 
racter. As the less guilty murderer will hide the corse 
that may lead to his detection, so does the adulterer, by 
obscuring the reputation of his victim, seek to diminish 
the moral responsibility he had incurred. Mr. Browne 
undoubtedly forms no exception to this system — be- 
trayed by his friend, and abandoned by his wife, his too 
generous confidence, his too tender love has been 
slanderously perverted into the sources of his calamity 
— because he could not tyrannize over her whom he 
adored, he was careless — because he could not suspect 
him in whom he trusted, he was careless; and crime in- 
the infatuation of its cunning found its justification eve* 
R 



194 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

on the virtues of its victim! I am not deterred by tbe 
prejudice thus cruelly excited — I appeal from the 
gossiping credulity of scandal to the grave decisions of 
fathers and of husbands, and I implore of you, as you 
value the blessings of your home, not to countenance 
the calumny which solicits a precedent to excuse their 
spoliation. At the close of the year 1809, the death of 
ray client's father gave him the inheritance of an ample 
fortune. Of all the joys his prosperity created, there 
was none but yielded to the ecstacy of sharing it with 
her he loved, the daughter of his father's ancient friend, 
the respectable proprietor of Oran Castle. She was 
then in the very spring of life, and never did the sun 
of heaven unfold a lovelier blossom — her look was 
beauty and her breath was fragrance— the eye that saw 
her caught a lustre from the vision; and all the virtues 
seemed to linger round her, like so many spotless 
spirits enamoured of her loveliness. 

" Yes, she was good as she was fair. 
None, none on earth above her, 
As pure in thought as angels are. 
To see her, was to love her.'* 

What years of tongueless transport might not her 
happy husband have anticipated ! What one addition 
could her beauties gain to render them all perfect! In 
the connubial rapture there was only one, and she was 
blessed with it. A lovely family of infant children gave 
her the consecrated name of mother, and with it all 
that heaven can give of interest to this world's worlh- 
lessness. Can the mind imagine a more delightful vision 



BROWNE y. BLAKE. 195 

than that of such a mother, thus young, thus lovely, 
thus beloved, blessing a husband's heart, basking in a 
world's smile ; and while she breathed into her little 
ones, the moral light, showing them that robed in all 
the light of beauty, it was still possible for their virtues 
to cast it into the shade. Year after year of happiness 
rolled on, and every year but added to their love, a 
pledge to make it happier than the former. Without 
ambition but her husband's love, without one object 
but her cliildren's happiness, this lovely woman, circled 
in her orbit, all bright, all beauteous in the prosperous 
hour, and if that hour e'er darkened, only beaming the 
brighter and the lovelier. What human hand could 
mar so pure a picture? — What punishment could ade- 
quately visit its violation! 

" Oh happy love, where love like this is found ! 
Oh heartfelt rapture! bliss beyond compare!" 

It was indeed the summer of their lives, and with it 
came the swarm of summer friends, that revel in the 
sunshine of the hour, and vanish with its splendour. 
High and honoured in that crowd— most gay, most 
cherished, most professing, stood the defendant, Mr. 
Blake. He was the plaintiff's dearest, fondest friend, 
to every pleasure called, in every case consulted, his 
day's companion,' and his evening guest, his constant, 
trusted, bosom confident, and under guise of all, oh 
human nature! he was his fellest, deadliest, final ene- 
my! Here, on the authority of this brief do I arraign 
him, of having wound himself into my client's intimacy 
•*^of having encouraged that intimacy into friendships 



196 SPEECH IiV THE CASE OF 

of having counterfeited a sympathy in his joys and in 
his sorrows; and when he seemed too pure even fop 
scepticism itself to doubt him, of having under the 
very sanctitv of his roof, perpetrated an adultery the 
most unprecedented and perfidious? If this be true, 
can the world's wealth defray the penalty of such tur- 
pitude? Mr. Browne, Gentlemen;, was ignorant of every 
agricultural pursuit, and, unfortunately adopting the 
advice of his father-in-law, he cultivated the amuse- 
iTients of the Currag'h, I say unfortunately, for his own 
affairs, and by nb means in reference to the pursuit it- 
self. It is not for me to libel an occupation which the 
highest, and noblest, and most ilhistrious throughout 
the empire, countenance by their adoption, which 
fashion and virtue grace by its attendance, and in which, 
peers and legislators and princes are not ashamed to 
appear conspicuous. But if the morahty that counte- 
nances it be doubtful, by what epithet shall we desig- 
nate that which would make it an apology for the most 
profligate of offences? Even if Mr. Browne's pursuits 
were ever so erroneous, was it for his bosom friend to 
take advantage of them to ruin him? On this subject, 
it is sufficient for me to remark, that under circum- 
stances of prosperity or vicissitudes, was their connu- 
bial happiness ever even remotely clouded? In fact, 
the plaintiff disregarded even the amusements that 
deprived him of her society. He took a house for her 
in the vicinity of Kildare, furnished it with all that 
hixury could require, and afforded her the greatest of 
all luxuries, that of enjoying and enhancing his most 
prodigal affection. From the hour of their marriage, 
\:p to the unfortunate discovery, they lived on terms 



BROWNK V. BL.\lv&. 197 

of the utmost tenderness; not a word, except one of 
love; not an act, except of nnutiial endearment, passed 
between them. Now, gentlemen, if this be proved to 
you, here I take my stand, and I say, under no earthly 
circumstances, can a justification of the adulterer be 
adduced. No matter with what delinquent sophistry 
he may blaspheme through its palliation, God ordained, 
nature cemented, happiness consecrated that celestial 
linion, and it is complicated treason against God and 
man, and society, to intend its violation. The social 
compact, through every fibre trembles at its conse- 
quences; not only polic}^, but law, not only law, but 
nature, not only nature, but religion deprecate and de- 
nounce it, — parent and offspring, — youth and age— the 
dead from the tombs — ^the child from its cradle, crea- 
tures scarce alive, and creatures still unborn ; the 
grandsire shivering on the verge of death; the infant 
quickening in the mother's womb; all with one assent 
re-echo God, and execrate adulte*ry! I say, then, where 
it is once proved that husband and wife live together 
in a state of happiness, no contingency on which the 
sun can shine, can warrant any man in attempting their 
separation. Did they do so? That is imperatively your 
first consideration. T only hope that all the hearts reli- 
gion has joined together, may have enjoyed the happi- 
ness they did. Their married state was one continued 
honey moon; and if ever cloud arose to dim it, before 
love's sigh it fled, and left its orb the brighter. Pros- 
perous and wealthy, fortune had no charms for Mr. 
Browne, but as it blessed the object of his affections. 
She made success delightful; she gave his wealth its 
value. The most splendid equipages— the most costly 
112 



198 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

luxuries, the richest retinue — all that vanity could in- 
vent to dazzle — all that affection could devise to gratify, 
vv^ere- her'Sj'and thought too vile for her enj oyment. 
Great as his fortune was, his love outshone it, and it 
seenns as if fortune was jealous of the performance. 
Proverbially capricious, she withdrew her smile, and 
left him shorn almost of every thing except his love, 
and the fidelity that crowned it. 

The hour of adversity is woman's hour-^—in the full 
blaze of fortune's rich meridian, her modest beam re- 
tires from vulgar notice, but when the clouds of wo 
collect around us, and shades and darkness dim the 
wanderer's path, that chaste and lovely light shines 
forth to cheer him, an emblem and an emanation of the 
heavens! — It was then her love, her value, and her 
pov/er was visible. No, it is not for the cheerfulness with 
which she bore the change I prize her — it is not that 
without a sigh she surrendered all the baubles of pros- 
perity — but that she pillowed her poor husband's heart, 
welcomed adversity to make him happy, held up her 
little children as the wealth that no adversity could take 
away; and when she found his spirit broken and his 
soul dejected, with a more than masculine understand- 
ing, retrieved, in some degree, his desperate fortunes, 
and saved the little wr^ck that solaced their retire- 
ment. What was such a woman worth, I ask you? If 
you can stoop to estimate by dross the worth of such 
a creature, give me even a notary's calculation, and tell 
me then what was she worth to him to whom she had 
consecrated the bloom of her youth, the charm of her 
innocence, the splendour of her beauty, the wealth of 
h^r tenderness, the power of her genius, the treasure 



BROWNE y. BLAKK. 199 

of her fidelity? She, the mother'of his children, the 
pulse of his heart, the joy of his prosperity, the solace 
of his misfortunes — what was she worth to him? Fallen 
as she is, you may still estimate her ; you may see her 
value even in her ruin. The gem is sullied the diamond 
is shivered; but even in its dust you may see the mag- 
r.ificence of its material. After this, they retired to 
Kockville, their seat in the county of Galway, where 
they resided in the most domestic manner, on the 
remnant of their once splendid establishment. The 
The butterflies, that in their noontide fluttered round 
them, vanished at the first breath of their adversity; but 
one early friend still remained faithful and affectionate, 
and that was the defendant. Mr. Blake is a young 
gentlenian of about eight and twenty; of splendid 
fortune, polished in his manners, interesting in his ap- 
pearance, with many qualities to attach a friend, and 
every quality to fascinate a female. Most willingly do 
I pay the tribute which nature claims for him; most 
bitterly do 1 lament that he has been so ungrateful to 
so prodigal a benefactress. The more Mr. Browne's 
fortunes accumulated, the more disinterestedly attached 
did Mr. Blake appear to him. He sharedvvith him his 
purse, he assisted him with his counsel; in an affair of 
honour he placed his life and character in his hands — 
he introduced his innocent sister, just arrived from an 
English Nunnery, into the family of his friend — he en- 
couraged every reciprocity of intercourse between the 
females; and, to crown all, that no possible suspicion 
inight attach to him, he seldom travelled without -his 
Domestic Chaplain! Now, if it shall appear that all this 
"Wus only a screen for his adultery— that he took ad^ 



200 SPEECH IX THE CASE OF 

vantage of his friend's misfortune to seduce the wife of 
his bosom— that he affected confidence only to betray 
it — that he perfected the wretchedness he pretended 
to console, and that in the midst of poverty he lias left 
his victim, friendless, hopeless, companionless; a hus- 
band without a w^ife, and a father without a child. Gra- 
cious God! iri it not enough to turn Mercy herself into 
an executioner! You convict for murder — here is the 
hand that murdered innocence! You convict for treason 
— here is the vilest disloyalty to friendship! — You con- 
vict for robbery— here is one who plundered virtue of 
her dearest pearl, and dissolved it-— even in the bowl 
that hospitality held out to him ! ! They pretend that he 
is innocent! Oh effrontery the most unblushing! Oh 
vilest insult, added to the deadUest injury! Oh base, 
detestable, and damnable hypocrisy! Of the final testi- 
mony it is try.e enough their cunning has deprived us; 
but under Providence, I shall pour upon this baseness 
such a flood of hght, that 1 will defy, not the most 
honourable man merely, but the most charitable sceptic, 
to touch the Holy Evangelists, and say, by their sanctity, 
it has not been committed. Attend upon me, now. 
Gentlemen, step by step, and with me rejoice, that, no 
matter how cautious may be the conspiracies of guilt, 
there is a Power above to confound and to discover 
them. 

On the 27ih of last January, Mary Hines, one of the 
domestics, received directions from Mrs. Browne, to 
have breakfast ready very early on the ensuing morn- 
ing, as the defendant, then on a visit at the house, ex- 
pressed an inclination to go out to hunt. She was ac- 
cordingly brushing down the stairs at a very early 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 201 

Fiour, when she observed the handle of the door stir, 
and fearing- the noise had disturbed her, she ran hastily 
down stairs to avoid her displeasure. She remained 
below about three quarters of an hour, when her mas- 
ter's bell ringing violently she hastened to answer it. 
He asked her in some alarm where her mistress was ? 
naturally enough astonished at such a question at such 
itn hour, &he sakl she knew uot, but would go down 
and see whether or not she was in the parlour. Mr. 
Browne, however, liad good reason to be alarmed, for 
she was so extremely indisposed going to be'd at night 
that an express stood actually prepared to bring medi- 
cal aid from Galway, unless slie appeared better. An 
tmusutil depression both of mind aud body preyed 
feipon Mrs. Browne on the^preceding evening. She fre- 
quently burst into tears, threw her arms around her 
husband's neck, saying that she was sure another 
jnomh would separate her for ever from him and her 
dear children. It was no accidental omen. Too surely 
the warning of Providence was upon her. When the 
maid was going down, Mr. Blake appeared at his door 
totally undressed, and in a tone of much confusion de- 
sired that his servant should be sent up to him. She 
went down — as she was about to return from her in-» 
effectual search, slie heard her master's voice in the 
most violent indignation, and almost immediately after 
Mrs. Browne rushed past her into the parlour, and 
Ivastily seizing her writing desk, desired her instantly 
to quit the apartment. Gentlemen, I request you will 
hear every syllable of this scene in your recollection, 
but most particularly the anxiety about the writing 



S02 SPEECH IN THE. CASE OF 

<Iesk. You will soon find that there was a cogent rea* 
son for it. Lluie was the wonder that ,Mr. Browne's 
tone should be that of violence and indignation. He 
had discovered his wife and friend totally undressed, 
just as they had escaped from the guilty bed-side 
where they stood in all the shame and horror of their 
situation ! He shouted for her brother, and that misera- 
ble brother had the agony of witnessing his guilty 
sister in the bed room of her paramour, both almost 
literally in a state of nudity. Blake! Blake! exclaimed 
the heart-struck husband, is this the return you have 
made for my hospitality? Oh, heavens ! what a reproach 
was there! It was not merely, you have dishonoured 
my bed — it was not merely, you have sacrificed my 
happiness— it was not merely, you have widowed me 
in my youth, and left me the fatlier of an orphan family 
~~it was not merely, you have violated a compact to 
which all the world swore a tacit veneration — but, you 
' — you have done it, my friend, my guest, under the 
very roof barbarians reverence; where you enjoyed my 
table, where you pledged my happiness; where you 
saw her in all the lovehness of her virtue, and at the 
very, hour when our little helpless children were wrapt 
•n that repose of which you have for ever robbed their 
miserable parents! I do confess when I paused here in 
the perusal of these instructions, the very life blood 
froze within my veins. What, said I, must I not only 
reveal this guilt! must I not only expose his p)srfidy! 
must 1 not only brand the inhdelity of a wife and a 
mother, but must I, amidst the agonies of outraged na- 
ture, n-ftike the brother the proof of the sister's prosti- 
tution! Thank God, Gentlemen, I may not be obhged 



BKOWNE V. BLAKE, 203 

•) torture you and him and myself, by such instrumen- 
tality. I tliink the proof is full without it, though it 
must add another pang to the soul of the poor plaintiff, 
because it must render it almost impossible that liis 
little infants are not tlie brood of this adulterous de- 
pravity. It will be distinctly proved to you by Honoria 
lirennan, another of the servants, that one night, so 
far back as the May previous to the last mentioned 
occurrence, when slie was in the act of arranging the 
beds, she saw Mr. Blake come up stairs, look cautiously 
about him, go to Mrs. Browne's bed-room door, and 
tap at it; that immediately after Mrs. Browne went, 
with no other covering than her shift, to Mr. Blake's 
bed-chamber, where the guilty parties locked them- 
selves up together. Terrified and astonished, the maid 
retired to the servant's apartments and in about a 
quarter of an hour after she saw Mrs. Browne in the 
same habiliments return from the bed-room of Blake 
into her husband's. Gentlemen, it was by one of those 
accidents which so often accompany and occasion the 
development of guilt, that we have arrived at tills evi- 
dence. It was very natural that she did not wish to 
I'eveal it; very natural that she did not wish either to 
expose her mistress^ or aflfiict her unconscious master 
)vith the recital; very natural that she did not desire to 
be the instrument (jf so frightful a discovery. How- 
ever, when she found that concealment was out of the 
question; that this action was actually in progress, and 
that the guilty delinquent was publicly triumphing in 
the absence of proof, and through an herd of slander- 
ous dependents, cruelly vilifying the character of his 
victim; she sent a friend to Mr. Browne, and in hi® 



204 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

presence, and that of two others, solemnly discovered 
her melancholy information. Gentlemen, I do entreat 
of you to examine this woman, ihongh she is an unedu- 
cated peasant, with all severity, because, if she speaks 
the truth, I think you will agree with me, that so hor- 
rible a complication of iniquity never disgraced the 
annals of a court of justice. He had just risen from the 
table of his friend — he left his own brother and that 
friend behind him, and even from the very board of 
his hospitality he proceeded to the defilement of his 
bed! Of mere adultery I had heard before. It was bad 
enough — a breach of all law, religion and morality — 
but — what shall I call this? — that seduced innocence — 

insulted misfortune betrayed friendship violated 

hospitality — tore up the very foundations of human na- 
ture, and harried its fragments at the violated altar, aa 
if to bury religion beneath the ruins of society! Oh, it 
is guilt might put a Demon to the blush! 

Does our proof rest here! No; though the mind 
must be sceptical that after this could doubt. A guilty 
correspondence was carried on between the parties, 
and though its contents were destroyed by Mrs. 
Browne on the niorning of the discovery, still we shall 
' authenticate the fact beyond suspicion. You shall hear 
it from the very messenger they entrusted — you shali 
hear from him too, that the wife and the adulterer 
both bound him to the utmost secrecy, at once esta- 
blishing their own collusion and their victim's igno- 
rance, proving by the very anxiety for concealment, 
the impossibility of connivance; so true it is that the 
conviction of guilt will often proceed even from the 
stratagem for its security. Does our proof rest hercr 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 205 

\o; you shall have it from a gentleman ofunimpeacha^ 
ble veracity, that the defendant himself confessed the 
discovery in his bed-room — " 1 will save him," said he, 
" the trouble of proving it; she was in her shift, and J 
was in my shirt. I know very well a jury will award 
damages against me; ask Browne will he agree to 
compromise it; he owes me some money, and I will 
give him the overplus in horses!" Can you imagine any 
thing more abominable. He seduced from his friend 
the idol of his soul, and the mother of "his children, and 
when he was writhing under the recent wound, he de- 
liberately offers him brutes in compensation! 1 will not 
depreciate this cruelty by any comment; yet the very 
brute he would barter for that unnatural mother, would 
have lost its hfe rather than desert its offspring. Now% 
Gentlemen, what rational mind but must spurn the as- 
servation of innocence after this! Why the anxiety 
about the writing desk? Why a clandestine correspon- 
dence with her husband's friend? Why remain, at two 
different periods, for a quarter of an hour together, in 
a gentleman's bed-chamber, with no other habiliment, 
at one time, than her bed-dress, at another than her 
shift. Is this customary with the married females of 
this country? Is this to be a precedent for our wives 
and daughters, sanctioned too by you, their parents 
and their husbands? Why did he confess that a verdict 
for damages must go against him, and make the offer 
of that unfeeling compromise? — Was it because he was 
innocent? The very offer was a judgment by default, 
a distinct, undeniable corroboration of his guilt. Was 
1 it that the female character should not suffer? Could 
I there be a more trumpet-tongued proclamation of her 
1 S 



206 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

criminality! Are our witnesses suborned? Let his army 
of Counsel sift and torture them. Can they prove it? 
Oh yes, if it be proveable. Let them produce her bro- 
ther—in our hands, a damning proof to be sure; but 
then, frightful, afflicting, unatural — in their^ the most 
consolatory and delightful, the vindication of calum- 
niated innocence, and that innocence the innocence of 
a sister. Such is the leading outline of our evidence — 
evidence which you will only wonder is so convincing 
in a case whose very nature presupposes the most cau- 
tious secrecy. The law, indeed, Gentlemen, duly esti- 
mating the difficulty of final proof in this species of 
action has recognized the validity of inferential evi- 
dence, but on that subject his Lordship must direct you. 
Do they rely then on the ground of innocency! If 
they do, I submit to you on the authority of the law, 
that inferential evidence is quite sufficient; and on the 
authority of reason, that in this particular case, the in- 
ferential testimony amounts to demonstration. Amongst 
the innumerable calumnies afloat, it has been hinted to 
me indeed, that they may mean to rely upon what they 
denominate the indiscretion of the husband. — The mo- 
ment they have the hardihood to resort to that, they, 
of course, abandoned all denial of delinquency, and even 
were it fully proved, it is then worth your most serious 
consideration, whether you will tolerate such a defence 
as that. It is in my mind beyond all endurance, that any 
man should dare to come into a Court of Justice, and 
on the shadowy pretence of what he may term care- . 
lessness, ground the most substantial and irreparable 
injury. Against the unmanly principle of conjugal 
severity, in the name of civilized society I solemnly 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 207 

protest. It is not fitted for the meridian, and I hope, 
will never amalgamate itself with the manners of this 
country — It is the most ungenerous and insulting sus- 
picion, reduced into the most unmanly and despotic 
practice. 

"Let barbarous nations whose inhuman love 
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they fell ; 
Let Eastern tyrants, from the light of heaven 
Seclude their bosom slaves, meanly possessed 
Of a mere lifeless violated form — 
While those whom love cements in holy faith 
And equal transport, free as nature live, 
Disdaining fear." 

But once establish the principle of this moral and do- 
mestic censorship, and then tell me where is it to begin? 
Where is it to end? Who shall bound? W^ho shall pre- 
face it? By what hitherto undiscoverable standard, shall 
we regulate the shades between solemnity and levity? 
Will you permit this impudent espionage upon your 
households; upon the hallowed' privapy of your do- 
mestic hours; and for what purpose? Why, that the 
seducer and the adulterer may calculate the security of 
his cold-blooded libertinism! — that he may steal hke an 
assassin upon your hours of relaxation, and convert 
perhaps your confidence into the instrument of your 
ruin! If this be once permitted as a ground of justifica- 
tion, we may bid farewell at once to all the dehghtful 
intercourse of social life.' Spurning as I do at this odious 
system of organized distrust, suppose the admission 
made, that my client was careless, indiscreet, culpable, 



::08 SPEECH IN THE CASE 6f 

if they will, in his domestic regulations, is it therefore 
to be endured, that every abandoned burglar should se- 
duce his wife, or violate his daughter? Is it to be en- 
dured, that Mr. Blake, of all men should rely on such 
an infamous and convenient extenuation! He — his 
friend, his guest, his confidant, he who introduced a 
spotless sister to this attainted intimacy; shall he say, I 
associated with you hourly, I affected your familiarity 
for many years, I accompanied my domesticated minis- 
ter of religion to your family; I almost naturalized the 
nearest female relative I had on earth, unsulhed and 
unmarried as she was within your hosehold : but—you 
fool—it was only to turn it into a brothel!! Merciful 
God, will you endure him when he tells you thus, that 
he is on the watch to prowl upon the weakness of hu- 
manity, and audaciously solicits your charter for such 
libertinism? 

I have heard it asserted also, that they mean to ar- 
raign the husband as a conspirator, because in the hour 
of confidence and misfortune he accepted a proffered 
pecuniary assistance from the man he thought his friend. 
It is true he did do so; but so, I will say, criminally care- 
ful was he of his interests that he gave him his bond, and 
made him enter up judgment on that bond, and made 
him issue an execution on that judgment, ready to be 
levied in a day, ihat in the wreck of all, the friend of 
his bosom shouild be at least indemified. It was my im- 
pression indeed, that under a lease of this nature, 
amongst lionourable men, so from any unwarrantable 
privilege created, there was rather a peculiar delicacy 
incumbent on the donor. I should have thought so still, 
but for a frightful expression of one of the Counsel on 



BROWNE V. BL4KE. 209 

the motion, by which they endeavoured not to trust a 
Dublin Jury with this issue. — What, exclaimed they, in 
all the pride of their execrable instructions, "poor 
plaintiff and rich defendant! Is there nothing* in that?** 
No, if my client's shape does not belie his species, 
there is nothing in that. I braved the assertion as a 
calumny on human nature — I call on you, if such an 
allegation be repeated, to visit it with vindictive and 
overwhelming damages? I would appeal, not to this 
civilized assembly, but to a horde of savages, whether 
it is possible for the most inhuman monster thus to 
sacrifice to infamy, his character — his wife— his home 
'■ — his children! In the name of possibility, I deny it; in 
in the name of humanity, I denounce it; in the name of 
our common country, and our common nature, 1 im- 
plore of the Learned Counsel not to promulgate such a 
slander upon both — but I need not do so; if the seal of 
advocjicy should induce them to the attempt, memory 
would array their happy homes before them — their 
little children would lisp its contradiction — their love — 
their hearts — their instinctive feelings as fathers and as 
husbands, would rebel within them, and wither up the 
horrid blasphemy upon their lips. 

They will find it difficult to palliate such turpitude— 
I am sure I find it difficult to aggravate. — It is in itself a 
hyperbole of wickedness. Honour, innocence, religion, 
friendship — all that is sanctified or lovely, or endearing 
in creation. — Ev6n that hallowed, social, shall I not say 
indigenous virtue—that blessed hospitality — which fo- 
reign envy could not deny, or foreign robbery despoil— 
which, when all else had perished, cast a bloom on our 
desolation, flinging its rich foilage over the nations^l 
S2 



210 SPEECH IIST THE CASB OF 

ruin, as if to hide the monument, while it gave a shelter 
to the mourner— even that withered away before that 
pestilence! But what do I say! was virtue merely tlie 
victim of this adulterer? Worse, worse — it was his in- 
strument — even on the broken tablet of the decalogue 
did he whet the dagger for his social assassination — 
What will you say, when I inform you, that a few 
months before, he went deliberately to the baptismal 
font with the waters of life to regenerate the infant that, 
too well could he avouch it, had been born in sin, and 
and he promised to teach it Christianity! And he pro- 
mised to guard it against "the flesh!" And lest infinite 
mercy should overlook the sins of its adulterous father, 
seeking to make his God his pander, he tried to damn 
it even with the Sacrament ! ! — See then the horrible 
atrocity of this case as it touches the defendant — but 
how can y^ou count its miseries as attaching to the 
plaintiff! He has suffered a pang the most agonizing to 
human sensibility — it has been inflicted by his friend, 
and inflicted beneath his roof — it commences at a period 
which casts a doubt on the legitimacy of his children, 
and to crown all, " upon him a son is born" even since 
the separation, upon whom every shilling of hi^ estates 
has entailed by settlement? What compensation can re- 
prise so unparalleled a sufferer! What solitary conso- 
lation is there in reserve for him! Is it love? Alas there 
was one whom he adored with all the heart's idolatry, 
and she deserted him. Is it friendship? There was one 
of all the world whom he trusted, and that one be- 
trayed him. Is it society? The smile of others' happi- 
ness appears but the epitaph of his own. Is it solitude? 
Can he be alone while memory striking on the sepul- 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 211 

oil re of his heart, calls into existence the spectres of 
the past. Shall he fly for refuge to his "sacred home!'* 
Every object there is eloquent of his ruin! Shall he seeic 
a mournful solace in his children? Oh, he has no chil- 
dren — there is the little favourite that she nursed, and 
there — there — even on its guileless features — there is 
the horrid smile of the adulterer!! 

Ob Gentlemen, am I this day only the Counsel of my 
client! no — no —I am the advocate of humanity — of 
yourselves — your homes — your wives — your families — 
your little children ; I am glad that this case exhibits 
such atrocity; unmarked as it is by any mitigatory fea- 
ture, it may stop the frightful advance of this calamity; 
it will be met now and marked with vengeance; if it be 
not, farewell to the virtlies of your country; farewell to 
all confidence between man and man; farewell to that ' 
unsuspicious and reciprocal tenderness, without which 
marriage is but a consecrated curse; if o'ths are to be 
violated; laws disregarded; friendship .betrayed ; hu- 
manity trample 1; national and individual honour stained; 
and that a jury of fathers, and of husbands will give 
such miscreancy a passport to their homes, and wives 
and daughters; farewell to all that yet remains of Ire- 
land! But I will not cast such a doubt upon the cha« 
racier of my country. Against the sneer of the foe, and 
the scepticism of the foreigner, 1 will still point to 
the domestic virtues, that no perfidy could barter, and 
no bribery can purchase, that with a Roman usage, at 
once embellish and consecrate households, giving to 
to the society of the hearth all the purity of the altar; 
that lingering alike in the palace and the cottage, are 
^ still to be found scattered over this land; the relic 



212 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

of what she was; the source perhaps of what she may 
be; the lone, and stately, and magnificent memorials, 
that rearing their majesty amid surrounding ruins, 
serve at once as the land marks of the departed glory, 
and the models by which the future may be erected. 

Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark 
this day, by your verdict, your horror at their profana- 
tion, and believe me, when the hand which records 
that verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks its 
traceless in the grave, many a happy home will bless 
its consequences, and many a mother teach her little 
child to hate the impious treason of adultery. 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

AT THE SLIGO COUNTY MEETING. 



Os Monday the 10th April, there was a large and 
respectable meeting in the court house, of the gentle- 
men, clergy, freeholders, and other inhabitants of the 
coianty of Sligo, for the purpose of taking into consi- 
deration an address of condolence to the king on the 
death of his royal father, and of congratulation to his 
majesty on his accession to the throne. Wm, Parke 
Esq. high sheriff in the chair. 

Owen Wynne Esq. moved an address. 

Major O'Hara seconded the motion, 

Charles Phillips Esq. then rose and spoke to the fol- 
I lowing effect: 

I I AM happy; Sir, in having an opportunity of giving 

j my concurrence both in the sentiment and principle 

, of the proposed address. I think it should meet the 
most perfect unanimity. The departed monarch de- 

j serves, and justly, every tribute which posterity can 

, pay him. He was one of the most popular that ever 

I swayed the sceptre of these countries. He never forgot 



214 SPEECH 

his early declaration that he gloried in the name ot 
Briton, and Britain now reciprocates the sentiment, 
and glories in the pride of his nativity. He was, indeed, 
a true born Englishman — brave, generous, benevolent 
and manly — in the exercise of his sway and the exer- 
cise of his virtues so perfectly consistent that it is diffi- 
cult to say whether as a man or sovereign he is most 
to be regretted. He commenced for the Catholic a con- 
ciliatory system— he preserved for the Prostestant the 
inviolability of the constitution — he gave to both a great 
example in the toleration of his principles and the in- 
tegrity of his practice. The historian will dwell with 
delight upon those topics. He will have little to cen- * 
sure and much to commend. He will speak of arts, 
manufactures, literature encouraged — he will linger ' 
long among those private virtues which wreathed 
themselves around his public station— which identified 
his domestic with his magisterial character, and made' 
the father of his family, the father of his people. He 
will not fail to remark how ample, and at the same 
time, how discriminating was his patronage, and he 
will truly say, that if the pencil of West, directed to 
the sacred volume by his bounty — if the old age of 
Johnson, cheered and consoled by his royal liberality, 
were to stand alone, they would undeniably attest the 
purity of his taste and the piety of his morals. Attri- 
butes, such as these. Sir, come home to the bosom of 
every man amongst us — they descend from the throne, 
they mingle with the fireside, they command more than 
majesty often can, not only the admiration but the sym- 1 
pathyof mankind. Nor may weforget,independent of his j 
most virtuous example in private life, the vast public 



ATSLIGD. 215 

feenefitSj which, as a king, his reign conferred upon 
the country— the liberty of the press, guaranteed, as far 
as reason can require it, and where restrair^ed, only so 
restrained as to prevent its running into hcentiousness 
—the trial by jury fully defined and firmly established 
—the independence of the bench voluntarily conceded^ 
which deprived (he executive of a powerful and possi- 
ble instrument, and vested the rights and property and 
privilege of the people in the integrity of a now unas- 
sailable tribunal. These are acts which we should re- 
gister in our hearts; they should canonize the memory 
of the monarch; they made his realm the land-mark of 
European liberty, they made its constitution the model 
for European imitation. Let us not either in our esti- 
mate of his characi^ forget the complexion of the 
limes in which he lived; times of portent and prodigy, 
enough to perplex the council of the wise, and daunt 
the valour of the warrior; — in such extremities, expe- 
rience becomes an infant, and calculation a contingen- 
cy. From the terrific chaos of the French revolution, a 
comet rose and blazed athwart our hemisphere, too 
splendid not to allure, too omiitous not to intimidate, 
too rapid and too eccentric for human speculation. The 
whole continent became absorbed in wonder; kings 
and statesmen and sages fell down and worshipped, 
and the political orbs, which had hitherto circled in 
harmony and peace, huivied from our system into the 
train of its conflagration. There was no order in poli- 
tics; no consistency in morals; no stedfastness in reli- 
gion. 

Vice prevailed and impious men bore sway. 



216 SPEECH 

Upon the tottering throne the hydra of democracy saS 
grinning; upon the ruined altar a wretched prostitute 
received devotion, and waved in mockery the burning 
cross over the prostrate mummers of the new philoso- 
phy! All Europe appeared spell-bound; nor like a vul- 
gar spell did it perish in the waters. It crossed the 
channel. There were not wanting in England abun- 
dance of anarchists to denounce the kiug, and of infi- 
dels to abjure the Deity; turbulent demagogues who 
made the abused name of freedom the pretence for 
their own factious selfishness; atheists looking, to be 
worshipped, repwblicans looking to be crowned; the 
nobles of the land were proscribed by anticipation, 
and their property partitioned by the disinterested 
patriotism of these Agrarian speculators. What do you 
think it was during that awful crisis which saved Eng- 
land from'tlie hellish Saturnalia which inverted France?^ 
Was it the prophetic inspiration of Mr. Burke? The 
uncertain adhesion of a standing army? The precarious 
■ principles of our navy at the Nore? Or the transient 
• ;. resources of a paper currency? Sir, I believe in my 
soul this empire owed its salvation during that storm 
to the personal character of the departed sovereign. 
When universal warfare was fulminated against mo- 
narchy, England naturally turned to its representative 
at home, and what did she find him? Frugal, morale 
humane, religious, benevolent, domestic; a good father,, 
a good husband, a good man, rendered the crown she 
gave him still more loyal, and not only preserving but 
purifying the trusts she had confided. She looked to 
his court, and did her morality blush at the splendid 
debauchery of a Versailles? Did her faith revolt at the 



AT SLIGO. 217 

gloomy fanaticism of an Esciirial? Far from it. She saw 
the dignity which testified her sway tempered by the 
purity which characterised her worsliip; she saw her dia- 
dem glowing with the gems of empire, but those gems 
were illumined by a ray from the altar; she saw that 
aloft on his triumphal chariot her monarcli needed nut 
the memento of the republican; he never for a moment 
forgot that ** he was a man." Sir, it would have been a 
lot above the condition of humanity, if his measures 
had not sometimes been impeached by party. But in 
all the conflicts of public opinion as to their policy, 
who ever heard an aspersion cast upon his motives? It 
is very true, had he followed other councils, events 
might have been different, but it is also well worth 
while to notice, would our situation have been im- 
proved? Would Great Britain revolutionised, have 
given her people purer morals, mere upright tribu- 
nals, more impartial justice, or more "perfect free- 
dom" than they now participate ? Did the murder of 
her prelates, her nobility and her king, followed by, 
twenty years of military sway, procure for France, # 
more popular privileges than those of which we have 
been in undisturbed possession ? Was the chance of 
some problematical improvement worth the contin- 
gencies? Should we surrender a present practical re- 
ality for the fantastic scheme of some Utopian theorist/ 
Ought we to confound a creation so regular and so 
lovely for the visionary paradise that chaos might re- 
veal to us? The experiment has been tried, and what 
has been the consequence? Look to the continent at 
this moment. Its unsettled governments! its perturbed 
spirit! its pestilential doctrines! Go to the tomb of 
T 



218 SPEECH 

Kotzebue ; knock nt the cemetery of the Bourbons; 
pl'ovidentially I have not to refer to your own mur* 
dered cabinet: you will find there how much easier it 
is to desolate than to create; how possible it is to ruin; 
how almost impracticable to restore. 

Even in a neighbouring county in your own island, 
look at the enormous temptation which has been of- 
fered in vain to its impoverished peasantry to induce 
them — to what? Why merely to surrender a murder- 
ous assassin well known to have been one of a numer- 
* 

ous association. Do you think such principles are na- 
tural to our people? Do you not think they are the result 
of system? Which do you beheve that such a sickening 
coincidence both at home and abroad is miraculous or 
premeditated? Sir, there is but one solution. You may 
depend upon it, the gulf is not yet closed whence the 
dreadful doctrines of treason, and assassination, and 
infidelity have issued. Men's minds are still ft verish 
and delirious, and whether they nickname the fever 
illumination in Germany, liberality in Faance, radical- 
ism in England, or by some more vulgar and unmean- 
ing epithet at home, they are all children of the same 
parent; all so many common and convulsive indications 
of the internal vitalityfof the revolutionary volcano. Sir, 
I am not now to learn that those opinions are unpalat- 
able to certain ultra patriots of the hour. I declared 
them before, and I now reiterate them still more em- 
phatically, because they have expressed a very impru- 
dent surprise thtit such opinions should proceed from 
me. Sir, if they mean to insinuate that I ever approved 
the practice or professed the principles of their infa- 
mous fraternity, they insinuate a base, slanderous, and 



AT ^IGO. 219 

malignant falsliood. I hold it to be the boimden duty 
of every honest man who ever pro!.< 'indeed a hberal 
opinion, to come forward and declarr his abhorrence 
of such doctrines. What! because I urn liberal, must I 
become rebellious? because I am toleraiji, must i re- 
nounce my creed? They have mistaken ijie very much. 
Though I vi^ould approve of any rational, practicable 
reform ; though I would go very far upon the road of 
liberality, 1 would not move for either, no, not one 
single inch, unless loyalty religion ..veoe to bear me 
company. I know tiot what tbey mean by their " Ra- 
dical Reform," unless they mean to uproot the Throne, 
the Altar, ad the State. I do not believe their chimera 
of annual parliaments and universal suffrage, I prefer 
a legislature comprising the wealth, the talent, and the 
education of the realm, to a radical directory of shoe- 
less coblers, and shopless apothecaries. I fly for pro- 
tection to my king, and for consolation to my God, from 
the lawless, creedless, murderous, blasphemous ban- 
ditti, who postpone them both to the putrid carcase of 
an outlawed infidel. Denounce me if you choose. I 
would sooner die to-morrow beneath the dagger of 
your hate, than live in the infectious leprosy of your 
friendship. My fellow-countrymen, it is high time to 
pause. Our very virtues by excess, may become vices. 
Let us aid the aggrieved, but let us not abet the assas- 
sin; let us tolerate the sectarian, not countenance the 
infidel; let us promulgate, if we can, an universal good, 
without shaking the basis of our social system, or the 
blessed foundation of our eternal hope. My own senti- 
ments, as to the most hmited toleration of all sects of 
Christians, you are not ndw, for the first time, to be 



22G SPEECH 

made acquainted with. I know that many good men, 
and many much abler men, dissent from me; and while 
I give them full credit on the score of sincerity, 1 only 
seek the same concession for myself. I would open the 
gates of constitutional preferment to all my fellow- 
subjects of every religious creed, wide as I expand to 
them the affections of my own heart. It is in my mind 
but fair, that he v/ho protects a state should receive a 
reciprocity of privileges; that ho man should be made 
familiar with its burthens, and at the same time be told 
he must remain a stranger to its benefits. This is an 
humble but conscientious opinion, given freely but not 
servilely — seeking to make others free, I will not sub- 
mit to become a slave myself, or compromise one par- 
ticle of selfrespect. Nay, more. Sir, though I would 
give, and give voluntarily, every liberal enfranchise- 
ment, I would not withdraw one prop — I would not 
deface even one useless ornament on the porch of the 
constitution; it has been founded by wisdom, defended 
by valour, consecrated by years, and cemented by the 
purest blood of patriotism : at every step beneath its 
sacred dome, we meet some holy relic, some sublime 
memorial; the tombs of the heroes^ and sages, and mar- 
tyrs of our history! the graves of the Russels and the 
Sydneys; the statues of the Hardwicks and the Hales; 
the sainted relics of departed piety; the table of the 
laws to which king and people are alike resjionsible; 
the eternal altar on whose divine commandments all 
those laws are founded; sublime, hallowed, invaluable 
treasures! unimpaired and imperishable be the temple 
that protects them! In the fullness of my heart I say to 
it, '' Esto perpetua,'^ may no political Marius ever rest 



AT SLIGO. 221 

upon its ruins. Sir, in reference to the congratulatory- 
part of your address, I cannot wish the august person- 
age to whom it refers a more auspicious wish than that 
he may follow implicitly the footsteps of his father. — 
These ways are ** ways of pleasantness," these paths 
are " paths of peace."'! hope his reign may be as hap- 
py as his Regency has been victorious, and that in the 
plenitude of power he will r.emember the country for- 
got not him when tliat power was very distant. These 
are not times, however, to be either too exigent or too 
unreasonable; the atheist meets us in our noon day- 
walk; the assassin waits not for the night's conceal- 
ment; all ranks, and sects, and parties should unite; all 
that is sacred in the eye of every christian, dear to 
every parent, and valuable to -every man, is menaced 
with annihilation; every cause of difference, whether 
real or imaginary, should be now suspended, until the 
national shout of "fear God, honour the king," drowns 
the warwhoop of impiety and treason; if we are to Hve, 
my countrymen, let us live in the security of laws; if » 
we are to die^ let us die in the consolations of religioH. 



T2 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR- PHILLIPS 

DELIVERED AT 

THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH ANB 

FOREIGN AUXILIARY BIBLE SOCIETY, 

LONDON. 



Although I have not had the lionotir ejtl^er of pro- 
posing or seconding any of your Resolutions, still, as a 
native of that country so pointedly alluded to in your 
report, I hope I may be indulged in afcv/ observations. 
The crisis in which we are placed is, I hope, a suffi- 
cient apology in itself for any intrusion; but 1 find such 
apology is rendered more than unnecessary by the 
courtesy of this reception. Indeed, my Lord, when we 
see omens which are every day arising — when we see 
blasphemy openly avowed — when we see the Scrip- 
tures audaciously ridiculed — when in this Christiari Mo- 
narchy the den of the repubhcan and the deist yawns 
for the unwary in your most public thoroughfares — 
when marts are ostentatiously opened, where the moral 
poison may be purchased, whose subtle venom enters 



AT LONDON. 223 

ibe very soul — when infidelity has become an article of 
commerce, and man's perdition may be cheapened at 
the stall of every pedlar — no friend of society should 
continue silent — it is no longer a question of pohtical 
privilege— of sectarian controversy — of theological dis- 
cussion;--it is become a question, whether Christianity 
itself shall stand, or whether we shall let go the firm 
anchor of our faith, and drift without chart, or helm, 
or compass, into the shoreless ocean of impiety and 
blood! I despise as much as any man, the whine of 
bigotry — I will go as far as any man for rational liberty, 
but I will not depose my God to deify the infidel, or 
tear in pieces the charter of the State, and grope 
for a constitution amongst the murky pigeon-holes of 
every creedless, lawless, infuriated regicide. When I 
saw the other day, my Lord, the chief bacchanal of 
their orgies — the man with whom the Apostles were 
cheats, and the Prophets liars, and Jesus an imposter, 
on his memorable trial, withering hour after hour with 
the most horrid blasphemies — surrounded by the vota- 
ries of every sect, and the heads of every faith— the 
Christian Archbishop — the Jewish Rabbi — the men 
most eminent for their piety and their learning, whom 
he had purposely collected to hear his infidel ridicule 
of all they reverenced — when I saw him raise the Holy 
Bible in one hand, and the Age of Reason in the other, 
as it were confronting the Almighty with a rebel Vv^orm, 
till the pious Judge grew pale, and the patient Jury 
interposed, and the self-convicted wretch himself, after 
having raved away all his original impiety, was reduced 
into a mere machine, for the reproduction of the 
ribald blasphemy of olhers—I could not help excluinv 



224 SPEECH 

ing, "Infatuated man— if all your impracticable mad- 
ness could be realized, what would you give us in ex- 
change for our establishment? What would you substi- 
tute for that just tribunal — for whom would you 
displace that independent Judge and that impartial 
Jury?— Would you really burn the Gospel and erase 
the statutes, for the dreadful equivalent of the crucifix 
and the guiUotinel" Indeed, if I was asked for a practi- 
cal panegyric on our Constitution, I would adduce the 
very trial of that criminal — and if the legal annals of 
any country upon earth furnished an instance, not 
merely of such justice, but of such patience, and for- 
bearance, such almost culpable indulgence, I would 
concede to him the triumph. I hope, too, in what I say, 
I shall not be considered as forsaking thiit illustrious 
example — I hope I am above an insult on any man in 
his situation-^perhaps, had I the power, I would follow 
the example further than I ought — perhaps I would 
even humble him into an evidence of the very spirit he 
spurned — and as our creed was reviled in his person, 
and vindicated in his conviction, so I would give it its 
noblest triumph injiis sentence, and merely consign 
him to the punishment of it$ mercy. 

But, indeed,^ my Lord, the fate of this half infidel, 
half trading martyr, matters very little in comparison 
of that of the thousands 4ie has corrupted. He has 
literally disseminated a moral plague, against which 
even the nation's quarrantine can scarce avail us. It has 
poisoned the fresh blood of infancy — it has disheartened 
the last hope of age — if his own account of its circula-^ 
tion be correct, hundreds of thousands must be thiis 
instant tainted with the infectious venom, whose sting 



AT LONDON. 225 

dies not with tlie destruction of the body. Imagine not 
because the pestilence smites not at once that its 
fatahty is less certain — imagine not because the lower 
orders are the earhest victims, that the most elevated 
will not suffer in their turn; the most mortal chillness 
begins at the extremities, and you may depend upon it, 
nothing but time and apathy are wanting to change this 
healthful land into a charnel-house, where murder, 
anarchy, and prostitution, and the whole hell-brood of 
infidelity, will quaff the heart's blood of the consecrated 
and the noble. My Lord, I am the more indignant at 
these designs, because they are sought to be concealed 
in the disguise of liberty. It is the duty of every real 
friend to liberty to tear the mask from the fiend who 
has usurped it. No, no, this is not our Island Goddess, 
bearing the mountain freshness on her cheeks, and 
scattering the valley's bounty from her hand, known by 
the lights that herald her fair presence, the peaceful 
virtues that attend her path, and the long blaze of 
glory that- lingers in her train — it is a demon, speak- 
ing fair indeed—tempting our faith with airy hopes and 
visionary realms, but even within the foldings of its 
mantle, hiding the bloody symbol of its purpose. Hear 
not its sophistry; guard your child against it; draw round 
your homes, the consecrated circle which it dare not 
enter. You will find an amulet in the religion of your 
country — it is the great mound raised by the Almighty 
for the protection of humanity — it stands between you 
and the lava of human passions; and oh, believe me, if 
you wait tamely by, while it is basely undermined, the 
fiery deluge will roll on, before which all that you hold 
dear, or venerable, or sacred will wither into ashes, 



:226 SPEECH 

Believe no one who tells you that the friends of free» 
dom are now, or ever were, the enemies of religion. 
They know too well that rebelUon against God cannot 
prove the basis of government for man, and that the 
loftiest structure impiety can raise is but the Babel 
monument of its impotence, and its pride, mocking the 
builders with a moment's strength and then covering 
them with inevitable confusion. Do you want an ex- 
ample? — only look to France, 'the microscopic vision 
of your rabble blasphemers has not sight enough to 
contemplate the mighty minds which commenced her 
revolution. The wit — the sage — ^the orator — the hero— . 
the whole family of genius furnished forth their trea- 
sures, and gave them nobly to the nation's exigence ; 
they had great provocation— they had a glorious cause 
— they had all that human potency could give them. 
But they relied too much upon this human potency — 
they abjured their God, and, as a natural consequence, 
they murdered their king — they culled their polluted 
deities from the brothel, and the fall of the idol extin- 
guished the flame of the altar. — They crowded the scaf- 
fold with all their country held of genius or of virtue, 
and when the peerage and the prelacy were exhausted, 
the mob-executioner of to-day became the mob-victim 
of to-morrow. No sex was spared — no age respected — 
no suffering pitied — and all this they did in the sacred 
name of hberty, though in the deluge of human blood, 
they left not a mountain top for the ark of liberty to 
rest on. But Providence was neither "dead nor sleep- 
ing." it mattered not that for a moment their impiety 
seemed to prosper — that victory panted after their en- 
sanguined banners— that as their msatiate eagle soare^l 



AT LONDON. 22T 

against the sun, he seemed but to replume his wing and 
to renew his vision — it was only for a moment, and you 
see at last that in the very banquet of their triumph, 
the Almighty's vengeance blazed upon the nvall, and 
their diadem fell from the brow of the idolater. 

My Lord, I will not abjure the altar, the throne, and 
the constitution for the bloody tinsel of this revolution- 
ary pantomine. I prefer my pod, to the impious de- 
mocracy of their pantheon— I will not desert my king 
for the political equality of their pandemonium. I must 
see some better authority than the Fleet-street temple,, 
before I forego the principles which I imbibed in my 
youth, and to which I look forward as the consolation 
of my age; those all-protecting principles which at once 
guard, and consecrate, and sweeten the social inter- 
course — which give life, happiness; and death, hope; 
which constitute man's purity, his best protection^ 
placing the infant's cradle and the female's couch be- 
neath the sacred shelter of the national morality. 
Neither Mr. Paine or Mr. Palmer, nor all the venom- 
breathing brood, shall swindle from me the book where 
I have learned these precepts — ^In despite of all their 
scoff, and scorn, and menacing, I say, of the sacred 
volume they would obUterate, it is a book of facts, as 
well authenticated as any heathen history — a book of 
miracles, incontestibly avouched— a book of prophecy, 
confirmed by past as well as present fulfilment — a book 
of poetry, pure and natural^ and elevated even to in- 
spiration — a book of morals, such as human wisdom 
never framed for the perfection of human happiness. 
My Lord, I will abide by the precepts, admire the 
beauty, revere the mysteries, and, as hv in me lies. 



228 SPEECH 

practise the mandates of this sacred volume; and shoulc 
the ridicule of earth, and the blasphemy of hell assail 
me, I shall console myself by the contemplation of 
those blessed spirits, who, in the same holy cause, have 
toiled, and shone, and suffered. In the " goodly fellow- 
ship of the Saints'*— in the "noble army of the Mar- 
tyrs"— in the society of the great, and good, and wise 
of every nation; if my sinfulness be not cleansed, and 
my darkness illuminated, at least my pretentionless 
submission may be excused. If I err with the luminaries 
I have chosen for my guides, I confess myself capti- 
vated by the loveliness of their aberrations. If they 
err, it is in an heavenly region — if they wander, it is in 
fields of light — if they aspire, it is at all events a glori- 
ous daring; and rather than sink with infidelity into 
the dust, I am content to cheat myself with their vision 
of eternity. It may indeed be nothing but delusion, 
but then I err with the disciples of philosophy and of 
virtue — with men who have drank deep at the fountain 
of human knowledge, but who dissolved not the pearl 
of their salvation in the draught. I err with Bacon, the 
great Bacon, the great confidant of nature, fraught 
with all the learning of the past, and almost prescient 
of the future; yet too wise not to know his weakness, 
and too philosophic not to feel his ignorance. I err with 
Milton, rising on an angel's wing to heaven, and like 
the bird of morn, soaring out of light, amid the music 
of his grateful piety. I err with Locke, whose pure 
philosophy only taught him to adore its source, whose 
warm love of genuine liberty was never chilled into 
rebellion with its author. I err with Newton, whose 
star like spirit, shooting athwart the darkness of the 



AT LONDON. 229 

sphere, too soon to re -ascend to the home of his 

*• . 
nativity. With men hke these, my Lord, 1 shall remain 

in error, nor shall I desert those errors even for the 
dnmken death-bed of a Paine, or the delirious war- 
whoop of the surviving fiends, who would erect his 
altar on the ruins of society. In my opinion it is diffi- 
cult to say, wdietlier their tenets are more ludicrous, 
or more detestable. They will not obey the King or 
the Prince, or the Parhament, or the Constitution, but 
they will obey anarchy. They will not believe in the 
Prophets— in Moses — in the Apostles—in Christ — but 
they believe Tom Paine! With no government but 
confusion, and no creed but scepticism, I believe, in my 
soul, they would abjure the one if it became legitimate. 
and rebel against the other if it was once established.— 
Holding, my Lord, opinions such as these, I could 
consider myself culpable, if, at such a crisis, I did not 
declare them. A lover of my country, I yet draw a 
line between patriotism and rebellion. A warm friend 
to liberty of conscience, I will not confound toleration 
with infideliy. With all its ambiguity, I shall die in the 
doctrines af the Christian faith; and with all its errors* 
I am contented to live under the glorious safeguards of 
the British Constitution. 



LETTER 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

TO THE KING. 



Sire, 
When I presume to address you on the subject which 
afflicts and agitates the country, I do so with the most 
profound sentiments of respect and loyalty. But I am 
no flatterer. I wish well to your illustrious house, and 
therefore address you in the tone of simple truth — the 
interests of the King and Qween are identified, and her 
majesty's advocate must be your's. The degradation of 
any branch of your family, must, in some degree, com- 
promise the dignity of all, and be assured there is as 
much danger as discredit in familiarizing the public 
eye to such a spectacle. I have no doubt that the 
present exhibition is not your royal wish; I have no 
doubt it is the work of wily sycophants and slanderers, 
who have persuaded you of vvhat they know to be false,' 
in the base hope that it may turn out to be profitable. 
With the view, then, of warning you against interested 
hypocrisy, and of giving to your heart its natural hu- 
mane and noble inclination, I invoke your attention to 
the situation of your persecuted consort! I implore of 
you to consider whether it would not be for the safety 



THE KING. 231 

of the state, for the tranquility of the country, for the 
honour of your liouse, and for the interests alike of 
royalty and humanity, that an helpless female should 
be permitted to pass in peace the few remaining years 
which unmerited misery has spared to her. 

It is now Sire, about five and twenty years since her 
majesty landed on the shores of England — a princes 
hy birtii — a queen by marriage — the relatives of kings 
— and th-e daughter and the sister of a hero. She was 
then young— direct from the indulgence of a paternal 
court — the blessing of her aged parents, of whom she 
was the hope and stay — and happiness shone brightly 
o'er her; her life had been all sunshine — time for her 
had only trod on flowers; and if the visions which en- 
dear, and decorate and hallow home, were vanished for 
ever, still did she resign them for the sacred name of 
wife, and sworn affection of a royal husband, and the 
•allegiance of a glorious and gallant people. She was no 
more to see her noble father's hand unhelm the war- 
rior's brow to fondle over his child — no more for her 
a mother's tongue delighted as it taught, that ear 
which never heard a strain, that eye which never 
opened on a scene, but those of careless, crimeless, 
I cloudless infancy, was now about to change its dulcet 
I tones and fairy visions for the accent and the coun- 
I try of tlie stranger. But she had heard the character of 
> Britons — she knew that cliivalry and courage co-ex- 
J isted— she knew that where the brave man and the 
free man dwelt, the very name ofiuoman bore a charm- 
ed sway, and where the voice of England echoed your 
I'oyal pledge, to "love and worship, and cleave to her 
alone," she but looked upon your Sire's example, and 



232 LETTER TO 

your nation's annals, and was satisfied. — Pause and 
contemplate her enviable station at the hour of these 
unhappy nuptials! The created world could scarcely 
exhibit a more interesting spectacle. There was no 
earthly bliss of which she was not either in the posses- 
sion or tlie expectancy. Roy«l alike by birth and alli- 
ance — honoured as the choice of England's heir, re- 
puted the most accomplished gentleman in Europe— 
her reputation spotless as the unfallen snow — her ap- 
proach heralded by a people's prayer, and her footsteps 
obliterated by an obsequious nobility — her youth, 
like the lovely season which it tipified, one crowded 
garland of rich and fragrant blossoms, refreshing every 
eye with present beauty, and filling every heart with 
promised benefits!— No wonder that she feared no 
famine in that spring tide of her happiness — no wonder 
that the speech was rapture, and her step was buoy- 
ancy! She was the darling of parent's hearts; a king- 
dom was her dower— her very glance, like the sun of 
heaven, diffused fight, and warmth, and luxury around 
it — in her public hour, fortune concentrated all its rays 
upon her, and when she shrunk from its too radient 
noon, it was within the shelter of a husband's love, 
which God and nature, and duty and morality, assured 
her un reluctant faith should be eternal. Such was she 
then, all joy and hope, and generous credulity, the 
credulity that springs from honour and from innocence. 
And who could blame it.? You had a world to choose, 
and she was your selection — your ages were compatible 
— your births were equal— you had drawn her from 
the house where she was honourable and happy — you 
had a prodigal allowance showered on you by the 



THE KING. 233 

people — ^you had bowed your anointed head before 
the altar, and sworn by its majesty to cherish and pro- 
tect her, and this you did in the presence of that moral 
nation from whom you hold the crown, and in the face 
of that church of which you are the guardian. The ties 
which bound you were of no ordinary texture — you 
stood not in the situation of some secluded profligate, 
whose brutal satiety might leave its victim to a death 
of solitude, where no eye could see, nor echo tell the 
quiverings of her agony. Your elevation was too lumi- 
nous and too lofty to be overlooked, and she, who con- 
fided with a vestal's faith and a virgin's purity in your 
honour and your morals, had a corroborative pledge in 
that publicity, which could not leave her to suffer or be 
sinned against in secret. All the calculations of her 
reason, all e;vidence of her experience, combined their 
confirmation. Her own parental home was purity itself, 
and yours might have bound republicans to royalty; it 
would have been little less than treason to have doubted 
you; and, oh! she was right to brush away the painted 
vermin that infest a court, who would have withered 
up her youthful heart with the wild errors of your ripe 
minority! Oh, she was right to trust the honour of 
** Fair England's" heir, and weigh but as a breath-blown 
grain of dust, a thousand follies and a thousand faults 
balanced against the conscience of her husband. She 
did confide, and what has been the consequence? 

History must record it, Sire, when the brightest gem 
in your diadem shall have mouldered, that this young, 
confiding, inexperienced creature had scarcely heard 
the last congratulatory address upon her marriage, 
•when she was exiled from her husband's bed, banished 
V2 



234^ LETTER TO 

from her husband's society, and abandoned to the pol- 
lution of every slanderous sycophant who chose to 
crawl over the ruir.? Merciful God! was it meet to leave 
a human being so situated, with all her passions ex- 
cited and inflamed to the impulses of such abandon- 
ment? Was it meet thus to subject her inexperienced 
youth to the scorpion sting of exasperated pride, and 
all its iiicidenlal natural temptations? Was it right to 
fiing the shadow of a husband's frown upon the then 
unsullied snow of her reputation? Up to the blight of 
that all'Withering hour no human tongue dared to 
asperse her charactex'. The sun of patronage was not 
then strong enough to quicken into life the serpent 
brood of slanderers: no starveling aliens, no hungry 
tribe of local expectants, then hoped to fatten upon the 
offals of the royal reputation. She v/as not long enough 
in widowhood, to give the spy and the perjurer even 
a colour for their inventions. The peculiarities of the 
foreigner; the weakness of the female — the natural 
vivacity of youthful innocence, could not then be tor- 
tured into *« demonstrations strong;" for you, yourself, 
in your recorded letter, had left her purity not only 
unimpeached, but unsuspected. That invaluable letter, 
the living document of your separation, gives us the 
sole reason for your exile, that your "inchnations," 
were not in your power! That, Sire, and that alone, 
was the terrific reason which you gave your consort 
for this heart-rending degradation. Perhaps they were 
not; but give me leave to ask, are not the obligations 
of religion independent of us? Has any man a right to 
square the solemnities of marriage according to his 
rude caprices? Am I your lowly subject, to understand 



THE KING. 235 

ttiat I may kneel before the throne of God, and promise 
conjugal fidelity till death, and self-absolve myself, 
whatever moment it suits my " inclination?" Not so 
will that mitred bench, who see 'her majesty arraigned 
l>efore them read to you this ceremony. They will tell 
you it is the most solemn ordinance of man—consecrated 
by the approving presence of our Savionr — acknow- 
ledged by the whole civilized community — the source 
of life's purest pleasures, and of death's happiest con- 
solations — the rich fountain of our life and being, 
whose drauglit not only purifies existence, but causes 
man to live in his posterity; — they will tell you that it 
cannot perish by '-inclination," but by crime, and that 
if there is any difference between the prince and the 
peasant wiio invoke its obhgation, it is the more en- 
larged duty entailed upon him, to whom the Almighty 
has vouchsafed the influence of an example. 

Thus, then, within one year after her marriage, was 
she flung " like a loathsome weed,** upon the world, 
no cause assigned except your loathing inclination ! It 
mattered nothing, that for you she had surrendered all 
her worldly prospects — that she had left her home, her 
parents and her country — that she had confided in the 
honour of a prince, and the heart of a man, and the 
faith of a Christian; she had, it seems, in one little year, 
"outlived your hking," and the poor, abandoned, 
branded, heart-rent outcast, must bear it all in silence, 
for — she w<7s a defenceless wumaTiy and a stranger. Let 
any man of ordinary feeling think on her situation at 
l!iis trying crisis, and say he does not feel his heart's 
blood boil within him! Poor unfortunate! who could 
have envied her her salaried shame, and her royal hu- 



236 LETTER TO 

miliation? The lowest peasant in her reversionary realm 
was happy in the comparison. The parents that loved 
her were far, far away — the friends of her youth were 
in another land — she was alone, and he who should 
have rushed between her and the bolt of heaven, left 
her exposed to a rude world's caprices. And yet she 
lived, and lived without a murmur; her tears were 
silent — her sighs were lonely; and when you, perhaps, 
in tlie rich blaze of earth's magnificence, forgot that 
such a wretch existed, no reproach-of her's awoke your 
slumbering memory. Perhaps she cherished the vi- 
sionary hope that the babe whose " perilous infancy'* 
she cradled, might one day be her hapless mothers 
advocate! How fondly did she trace each faint resem- 
blance! Each little casual paternal smile, which played 
upon the features of that child, and might some distant 
day be her redemption! How, as it lisped the sacred 
name of father, did she hope its innocent infant tone 
might yet awake within that father's breast some fond 
association! Oh, sacred fancies! Oh, sweet and solemn 
visions of a mother — who but must hallow thee! Blest 
be the day-dream that beguiles her heart, and robes 
each cloud that hovers o'er her child in airy colours of 
that heart's creation ! Too soon life's wintry whirlwind 
must come to sweep the prismed vapour into nothing. 
Thus, Sire, for many and many a heavy year did your 
deserted Queen beguile her solitude. Meanwhile for 
you a flattering world assumed its harlot smiles — ^the 
ready lie denied yoiir errors — the villain courtier deified 
each act, which in an humble man was merely duty, 
and mid the din of pomp and mirth, and revelry, if 
remorse spoke, 'twas inarticulate. Believe me Sire, 



THE KING. '2o7 

\vhen all the tongues that flattered you are mute, and 
all the gaudy pageants that deceived you are not even 
a shadow, an awful voice will ask in thunder, did your 
poor wife deserve this treatment,, merely from some 
distaste of "incUnation?" It must be answered. Did 
not the altar's vow demand a strict fidelity, and was it 
not a solemn and a sworn duty, *' for better and for 
worse," to watch and tend her — correct her wayward- 
ness by gentle chiding, and fling the fondness of an 
husband's love between her errors and the world? It 
must be answered, where the poorest rag upon the 
poorest beggar in your realm, shall have the splendour 
of a coronation garment. . 

S.vl, alas! were these sorrows of her solitude — but 
sad as they were, they were but in their infancy. The 
first blow passed — a second and severer followed. The 
darling child, over whose couch she shed her silent 
tear — upon whose head she poured her daily benedic- 
tion — in whose infant smile she lived, and moved, and 
had her being, v;as torn away, and in the mother's 
sweet endearments she could no longer lose the mise- 
ries of the wife. Her father, and her laurelled brother 
too, upon the field of battle, sealed a life of glory, 
happy in a soldier's death, far happier that this dread- 
ful day was spared them ! Her sole surviving parent 
followed soon, and though they left her almost alone 
on earth, yet how could slie regret them? she has at 
least the bitter consolation, that their poor child's 
miseries did not 'break their hearts. Oh, miserable 
woman! noiade to rejoice over the very grave of her 
kindred, in mournful gratitude that their hearts are 
marble. 



23S LETTE.R TO 

During a long probation of exile and wo, bereft of 
parents, country, child and husband, she had one 
solace still — her character was unblemished. By a re- 
finement upon cruelty, even that consolation was de- 
nied her. Twice had she to undergo the inquisition of 
a secret trial, originating in foul conspiracy, and ending 
in complete acquittal. The chanty, of her nature was 
made the source of crime — the peculiarities insepara- 
ble from her birth were made the ground of accusa- 
tion—her very servants were questioned whether 
every thought, and word, and look, and gesture, and 
visit, were not so many overt acts of adultery; and when 
her most sacred moments had been heartlessly ex- 
plored, the tardy verdict which freed her from the 
guilt, could not absolve, her from tlie humiliating con- 
sciousness of the accusation. Your gracious father, in- 
deed, with a benevolence of heart more t-oyal than his 
royalty, interposed his arm between innocence and 
punishment; for punishment it was, most deep and 
grievous, to meet discountenance from all your family, 
and see the fame which had defied all proof made the 
capricous sport of hint and insinuation, while that 
father lived, she still had some protection, even in his 
night of life thei^e was a sanctity about him which 
awed the daring of the highway slanderer — his honest, 
open, genuine English look^, would have silenced a 
whole banditti of Italians. Your father acted upon the 
]>rinciples he professed. He was not more reverenced 
as a king than he was beloved and respected as a man; 
and no doubt he felt how poignant it must have been 
to be denounced as a criminal without crime, and 
treated as a widow in her husband's life-time. But 



THE KING. 2o9 

death was busy with her best protectors, and the ven- 
erable form is hfeless now, which would have shielded 
a daughter and a Brunswick. He would have warned 
the Milan panders to beware the honour of his ancient 
house; he would have told them that a prying", pettifog- 
ging, purchased inquisition upon the unconscious pri- 
vacy of a royal female, was not in the spirit of the En- 
glish character; he would have disdained the petty lar- 
ceny of any diplomatic pickpocket; and he would have 
told the whole rabble of Italian informers and swindling 
ambassadors, that his daughter's existence should not 
become a perpetual proscription; that she was doubly 
allied to him by birth and marriage; and that those who 
exacted all a wife's obedience, should have previously 
procured for her husband's countenance. God reward 
him ! There is not a father or an husband in the land, 
whose heart does not at this moment make a pilgrim- 
age to his monument. 

Thus having escaped from two conspiracies equally 
affecting iier honour and life, finding all conciliation 
hopeless, bereft by death of every natural protector, 
and fearing perhaps that practice tnight m.ake perjury 
eondstent, she reluctantly determined. on leaving Eng;- 
Jand. One pang alone embiltered her departure — her 
darhng, and in despite of all discountenance, her du- 
teous child, clung round her heart with natural tenacity. 
Parents who love, and feel that very love compelling se- 
paration, can only feel for her. Yet hov/ could she sub- 
ject that devoted child tothehumiliation of her mother's 
misery! How reduce liei* to the sad alternative of se- 
lecting between separated parents! She chose tljc 
generous, the noble sacrifice — self-banished, the world 



240 LETTER TO 

was before her — one grateful sigli for England— one 
tear — the last, last tear upon her daughter's head — and 
she departed. 

Oh Sire, imagine her at that departure! How chang- 
ed ! how fallen, since a few short years before, she 
touched the shores of England ! The day -beam fell not 
on a happier creature — creation caught new colours 
from her presence, joy sounded its timbrel as she 
passed, and the flowers of birth, of beauty, and of chi- 
valry, bowed down before her. But nov\^, alone, an 
orphan and a widow! her gallant brother in his shroud 
of glory; no arm to shield, no tongue to advocate, no 
friend to follow an o'erclouded fortune, branded, de- 
graded, desolate, she flung herself once more upon 
the wave, to her less fickle than a husband's promises! 
I do'not wonder that she has now to pass through a 
severer ordeal, because impunity gives persecution 
confidence. But I marvel indeed much, that then, after 
the agony of an ex parte trial, and the triumph of a 
complete though lingering exculpation, the natural 
spirit of English justice did not stand embodied be- 
tween her and the shore, and bear her indignant to 
your capital. The people, the peerage, the prelacy 
should have sprung into unanimous procession; all thab 
was noble or powerful, or consecrated in the land, 
should have borne her to the palace gate, and de- 
manded why their Queen presented to their eye this 
gross anomaly! Why her anointed brow should bow 
down in the dust, when a British verdict had pro* 
nounced her innocence! Why she was refused that 
conjugal restitution, which her humblest subject had a 
right to claim! Why the annals of their time should be. 



THE Kmc. 241 

disgraced, and the morals of their nation endure the 
taint of this terrific precedent; and why it was that 
after their countless sacrifices for your royal house, 
they should be cursed with this pageantry of royal hu- 
mihation ! Had they so acted the dire affliction of this 
day might have been spared us. We should not have 
seen the filthy sewers of Italy disgorge a living leprosy 
upon our throne; and slaves and spies, imported from 
a creedless brothel, land to attaint the sacred Majesty 
of England ! But who, alas! will succour the unfortu- 
nate ? The cloud of your displeasure was upon her, 
and the gay, glittering, countless insect swarm of sum- 
mer friends, abide but in the sun-beam ! She passed 
away — with sympathy I doubt not, but in silence. 

Who could have thought, that in a foreign land, the 
restless fiend of persecution would have haunted her? 
Who could have thought, that in those distant climes^ 
where her distracted brain had sought oblivion, the 
demoniac malice of her enemies would hav^ followed? 
who could have thought that any human form which 
had an heart, would have skulked after the mourner 
in her wanderings, to note and con every unconscious 
gesture? who could have thought, that such a man there 
,was, who had drank at the pure fountain of our British 
law! who had seen eternal justice in her sanctuary! 
who had invoked the shades of Holt and Hardwicke, 
and held high converse with those mighty spirits, 
whom mercy hailed in heaven as her representatives 
on earth! 

Yet such a man there was; who, on the classic shores 
of Como, even in the land of the illustrious Roipan, 
where every stone entombed an hero, and every scent 
X 



242 LETTER TO 

was redolent of genius, forgot his Jiame, his country, 
and his calling, to hoard such coinable and rabble slan- 
der! oh, sacred shades of our departed sages! avert 
your eyes from this unhallowed spectacle; the spotless 
ermine is unsullied still; the ark yet stands untainted 
in the temple, and should unconsecrated hands assail 
it, there is a lightning still, which would not slumber! 
No, no; the judgment seat of British law is to be soar- 
ed, not crawled to ; it must be sought upon an eagle'a 
pinion and gazed at by an eagle's eye; there is a radiant 
purity around it, to blast the glance of grovelling spe- 
culation. His labour was in vain, Sire, the people of 
Etigland will not hsten to Italian witnesses, nor ought 
they. Our Queen, has been, before this, twice assailed, 
and assailed on the same charges. Adultery, nay, preg- 
nancy, was positively sworn to, one of the ornaments 
of our navy captain Manby, and one of the most glo- 
rious heroes who ever gave a nation immortality, a 
spirit of Marathon or old Thermopylse; he who planted 
England's red cross on the walls of Acre, and showed 
jS' apoleoTi, it was invincible, were the branded traitors 
to their sovereign's bed! Englishmen, and, greater 
scandal, English ivomen, persons of rank, and birth, 
and education, were found to depose to this infernal 
charge! the royal mandate issued for enquiry; Lord 
Erskine, Lord EUenborough, a man who had dandled 
accusations from his infancy, sat on the commission; 
and wh'dt was the result? They found a verdict of perjuiy 
against her base accusers! The very child for whose 
parentage she might have shed her sacred blood, was 
proved beyond all possible denial, to have been but 
the adoption of her charity. — '' We are happy to de- 
clare to your majesty our perfect conviction, that therr 



THE KING. 243 

IS no foundation whatever for believing', (I quote the 
very words of the comniissiones,) that the child now 
with the princess, is the child of her royal highness, 
or that she was delivered of any child in the year 1802; 
nor has any thing appeared to us, which would war- 
rant the belief that she was pregnant in that year, or 
at any other period imthin the compass of our enquiries.^* 
Yet people of rank, and station, moving in the highest 
society in England, admitted even to the sovereign's 
court, actually volunteered their sworn attestation of 
this falshood! Twenty years have rolled over her since, 
and yet the same foul charge of adultery, sustained 
not as before by the plausible fabrications of English- 
men, but bolstered by the Iiabitual inventions of Ital- 
ians, is sought to be affixed to the evening of her life^ in 
the face of a generous and a loyal people! A kind of 
sacramental shipload — a packed and assorted cargo of 
human affidavits has been consigned, it seems, from 
Italy to Westminster; thirty three thousand pounds of 
the people's money paid the pedlar who selected the 
articles; and with this infected freight, which should 
have performed quarantine before it vomited its 'inoral 
pestilence amonst us, the Queen of England is sought 
to be attainted! It cannot be, Sire; we have given 
much, very much indeed, to foreigners, but we will 
Kot concede to them the hard-earned principles of 
British justice. It is not to be endured, that two acquit- 
tals should be followed by a third experimen^, that 
when the English testament has failed, an Italian mis- 
sal^s kiss shall be resorted to; that when people of 
character here have been discredited, others should 
f •? recruited who have no character any where,- hni 



214 LETTER TO 

above all, it is intolerable, that a defenceless woman 
should pass her life in endle^ persecution, with one 
trial in swift succession fojlowicg another, in the hope 
perhaps, that her noble heart which has defied all proof 
should perish in the torture of eternal accusation. Send 
back, then, to Italy, those alien adventurers; the land 
of their birth, and the habits of their lives, alike unfit 
for an English court of justice. There is no Spark of 
freedom — no grace of religion — no sense of morals in 
their degenerate soil. Eifeminate in manners; sensual 
from their cradles; crafty, venal, and officious; natural- 
ized to crime; outcasts of credulity; they have seen 
from their infancy their court a bagnio, their very 
churches scenes of daily assassination ! their faith is 
form; their marriage ceremony a mere mask for the 
most incestuous intercourses; gold is the god before 
which they prostrate every impulse of their nature. 
" A euri sacra fames! quid non mortalia pectora cogis!" 
the once indignant exclamation of their antiquity, has 
become the maxim of their modern practice. 

No nice extreme a true Italian knows: 
But, bid him go to hell — to hell he goes. 

Away with them any where from us; they cannot 
live in England; they will die in the purity of its moral 
atmosphere. 

Mealiwhi.^e during this accursed scrutiny, even while 
the legal blood-hounds were on the scent, the last dear 
stay which bound her to the world parted, the princess 
Charlotte died! I will not harrow up a father's feelings, 
by dwelling on this dreadful recollection. The poet 



THE KING. 245 

says, that even grief finds comfort in society, and Eng- 
land wept with you. But, oh, God! what must have 
been that hapless mother's misery, when first the dis. 
mal tidings came upon her! The darhng child over 
whose cradle she had shed so many tears — whose light- 
est look was treasured in her memory — who, amid the 
world's frown, still smiled upon her — the fair and 
lovely flower, which, when her orb was quenched in 
tears, lost not its filial, its divine fidelity! It was blighted 
in its blossom — its verdant stem was withered, and in 
a fi3reign land she heard it, and alone — no, no, not quite 
alone. The myrmidons of British hate were around her, 
and when her heart's salt tears were blinding her, a 
German nobleman was plundering her letters. Bethink 
you, Sire, if that fair paragon of daughters Hved, would 
England's heart be wrung with this inquiry? Oh! she 
would have torn the diamonds from her brow, and 
dashed each royal mockery to the earth, and rushed 
before the people, not in a monarch's, but in nature^s 
majesty — a child appealing for her persecuted mother! 
and God would bless the sight, and man would hallow 
it, and every little infant in the land who felt a mother's 
warm tear upon her cheek, would turn by instinct to 
that sacred summons. Your daughter in her shroud, is 
yet alive. Sire — her spirit is amongst us — it rose un- 
tombed when her poor mother landed— it walks amid 
the people- — it has left the angels to protect a parent. 
The theme is sacred, and I will not sully it — I will 
not recapitulate the griefs, and, worse than griefs, the 
little, pitiful, deliberate insults which are burning on 
every tongue in England. Every hope blighted— every 
friend discountenanced — her kindred in their grave— 
X2 



2i6 LETTER TO 

her declared innocence made but the herald to a more 
cruel accusation — her two trials followed by a third, a 
third on the same charges-r-her royal character insin. 
uated away by German picklocks and Italian conspira- 
tors — her divorce sought by an extraordinary proce- 
dure, upon grounds untenable before any usual lay or 
ecclesiastical tribunal— her name meanly erased from 
the Liturgy — her natural rights as a mother disregard- 
ed, and her civil right as a queen sought to be exter- 
minated! and all this— all, because she dared to touch 
the sacred soil of liberty! because she did not banish 
herself, an implied adulteress! because she would not 
be bribed into an abandonment of herself and of the 
country over which she has been called to reign, and 
to which her heart is bound by the most tender ties, 
and the most indelible obligations. Yes, she might have 
lived wherever she selected, in all the magnificence 
which boundless bribery could procure for her, offer- 
ed her by those who affect such tenderness for your 
royal character, and such devotion to the honour of 
her royal bed. If they thought her guilty, as they al- 
lege, this daring offer was a double treason — treason 
to your majesty, whose honour they compromised — 
treason to the people, whose money they thus prosti- 
tuted. But she spurned the infamous temptation, and 
she was right. She was right to front her insatiable ac- 
cusers; even were she guilty, never was there victim 
with such crying palliations, but all innocent, as in ]:.. 
conscience I believe her to be, not perhaps of ,, 
levities contingent on her birth, and which shall not 
be converted into constructive crime, but of the cruel 
charge of adultery, now for a third time produced 



THE KING. 247 

against her. She was right, bereft of the court, which 
was her natural residence, and all buoyant with inno- 
cence as she felt, bravely to fling herself upon the wave 
of the people — that people will protect her — Britain's 
red cross is her flag, and Brunswick's spirit is her 
pilot. May the Almighty send her royal vessel tri- 
un)phant into harbour! 

Sire, I am almost done; I have touched but slightly 
on your Queen's misfortunes — I have contracted the 
* volume of her injuries to a single page, and if upon 
that page one word offend you, impute it to my zeal, 
not my intention. Accustomed all my life to speak the 
simple truth, I offer it with fearless. honesty to my so- 
vereign. You are in a difficult — it may be in a most 
perilous emergency. Banish from your court the syc- 
ophants who abuse you; surround your palace with ap- 
proving multitudes, not with armed mercenaries Other 
crowns may be bestowed by despots and entrenched 
by cannon; but 

The throne we honour is the people's choice. 

Its safest bulwark is the popular heart, and its bright- 
est ornament domestic mirtue. Forget not also, there is 
a throne which is above even the throne of England — > 
where flatterers cannot come — where kings are seep- 
treless. The vow*s you made are written in language 
f ^hter than the sun, and in the course of nature, you 
1 St soon confront them; prepare the way by effacing 
now, each seeming, slight and fancied injury; and when 
you answer the last awful trumpet, be your answer 
this: "GOD, I FORGAVE— I HOPE TO BE FOR- 
GIVEN." 



248 LETTER T0 

But, if against all policy, and all humanity, and all 
religion, you should hearken to the counsels which 
further countenance this unmanly persecution, then 
niust I appeal not to you but to your parliament. I ap- 
peal to the sacred prelacy of England, whether the holy 
vows which their high church administered, have been 
kept towards this illustrious lady — whether the hand 
of man should have erased her from that page, with 
which it is worse than blasphemy in man to interfere 
— whether, as Heaven's vicegerents, they will not ab- 
jure the sordid passions of the earth, imitate the in- 
spired humanity of their Saviour; and hke Him, protect 
a persecuted creature from the insatiate fangs of ruth- 
less, bloody, and untiring accusation! 

I appeal to the hereditary peerage of the realm, whe- 
ther they will aid this levelling denunciation of their 
Queen— whether they will exhibit the unseemly spec- 
tacle of illustrious rank and royal lineage degraded for 
the crime of claiming its inheritance — whether they 
Avill hold a sort of civil crimination, where the accused 
is entitled to the mercy of an impeachment ; or whether 
they will say with their immortal ancestors — " We will 
not tamper with the laws of England!'* 

I appeal to the ermined, independent judges, whether 
life is to be made a perpetual indictment — whether two 
acquittals should not discountenance a third experi- 
ment — whether, if any subject suitor came to their tri- 
bunal /Aw* circy^mstanced, claiming either divorce or 
compensation, they would grant his suit; and I invoke 
from them, by the eternal majesty of British justice, 
the same measure for the peasant and the prince! 

J appeal to the Commons in Parliament assembled^ 



THE KING. 249 

iepresenting the fathers and the husbands of the nation 
— I beseech them by the outraged morals of the land! 
By the overshadowed dignity of the throne! by the ho- 
liest and tenderest forms of rehgion! by the honour of 
the army, the sanctity of the church, the safety of the 
state, and character of the country! by the solemn vir- 
tues which consecrate their hearths! by those fond en- 
dearments of nature and ,of habit which attach them to 
their cherished wives and families, I implore their 
tears, their protection, and their pity upon the mar- 
ried widow and the childless mother! 

To those high powers and authorities I appeal with 
the firmest confidence in their honour, their integrity, 
and their wisdom. May their conduct justify my faith, 
and raise no blush on the cheek of our posterity! 
I have the honour to subscribe myself, 
^ Sire, 
Your Majesty's most faithful subject, 

CHARLES PHILLIPS, 



THE END. 




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